University of Wisconsin-Madison
Post-Merger Product Repositioning (March 2008, Journal of Industrial Economics)
On The Nonparametric Foundations of Product Differentiated Demand Systems
Identifying Selection and Discrete Continuous Choice Models using Mixtures (with Jeremy Fox)
Estimating Production Functions with Heterogeneous Firms (with Salvador Navarro)
The Stochastic Response Dynamic - Computing Nash Equilibrium using Markov Chain Monte Carlo
Nonparametrically Testing for Endogenous Entry in Private Value Auctions (with Dan Quint)
A key assumption in some theoretical models of auctions with entry is that bidders make their entry decision before learning their valuation for the object for sale. This assumption is tricky to test empirically, for two reasons: 1. Even without selection, auctions with more bidders will tend to lead to higher prices 2. Comparisons may be further complicated by unobserved heterogeneity in the objects for sale, leading to correlation in bidder valuations We derive and apply a simple nonparametric test for exogenous participation which is robust to arbitrary heterogeneity in the objects for sale, and requires only bid data, not observations of (or a model of) auction-specific covariates.
Cheap Sex - Explaining the Rise of Sex and Violence on Broadcast Television (with Simon Wilkie and Matt Spitzer)
We show that the change in the vertical organization of broadcast television brought about the 1996 telecommunication act explains the dramatic rise in the incidence of sex and violence on television in the period between 1998-2004. Our bargaining model yields nontrivial predictions concerning the differences in the amount of sex and violence shown across networks, and our empirical analysis confirms these predictions, namely that Fox and CBS should be more violent on average.