Structural Econometric Modeling in Industrial Organization and Quantitative Marketing - by Ali Hortaçsu & Joonhwi Joo (Hardcover)

About the Book

"Within economics a relatively new way of modeling has dominated important subfields: structural modeling. The goal of this book is to give an overview on how the various streams of literatures in empirical industrial organization and quantitative marketing use structural econometric modeling to estimate the model parameters, give the economic-model-based predictions, and conduct the policy counterfactual experiments. The traditional way of modelling, called "reduced-form" builds its models from simple relationships between variables of interests, which are mostly linear. Structural econometric models start by specifying the structure of the economic model, and the variables are calibrated from real-world data. This method enables better predictions and policy counterfactuals, and has other benefits. When considering a hypothetical policy change using the traditional modeling method ("reduced form"), researchers can often only estimate whether an effect would be positive or negative. With a structural econometric model using real-world data, a researcher can obtain the magnitude of the effects resulting from a hypothetical change. But the ability of quantifying the effects associated with a hypothetical policy change comes with its costs: the nonlinearity from explicitly specifying the possible relationships makes the structural econometric approach generally much more difficult to implement than its reduced-form counterpart. Therefore this book will provide a much-needed resource on how to use these methods effectively in the fields in which they been used the most, empirical industrial organization and quantitative marketing"--

Book Synopsis

A concise and rigorous introduction to widely used approaches in structural econometric modeling

Structural econometric modeling specifies the structure of an economic model and estimates the model's parameters from real-world data. Structural econometric modeling enables better economic theory-based predictions and policy counterfactuals. This book offers a primer on recent developments in these modeling techniques, which are used widely in empirical industrial organization, quantitative marketing, and related fields. It covers such topics as discrete choice modeling, demand modes, estimation of the firm entry models with strategic interactions, consumer search, and theory/empirics of auctions. The book makes highly technical material accessible to graduate students, describing key insights succinctly but without sacrificing rigor.

- Concise overview of the most widely used structural econometric models
- Rigorous and systematic treatment of the topics, emphasizing key insights
- Coverage of demand estimation, estimation of static and dynamic game theoretic models, consumer search, and auctions
- Focus on econometric models while providing concise reviews of relevant theoretical models

About the Author

Ali Hortaçsu is the Ralph and Mary Otis Isham Professor of Economics at the University of Chicago. He coedited volumes 4 and 5 of the Handbook of Industrial Organization and has served as coeditor of the Journal of Political Economy, RAND Journal of Economics, and the International Journal of Industrial Organization. Joonhwi Joo is an assistant professor of marketing at the University of Texas at Dallas Naveen Jindal School of Management.