【主讲】Yu Zhou Assistant Professor (复旦大学经济学院)
【主题】Identification and Estimation of Entry Games Under Symmetry of Unobservables
【时间】2016年9月23日 (周五) 15：30-17：00
【地点】上海财经大学经济学院楼701室
【语言】英文
【摘要】This paper studies semiparametric point identification and estimation of complete information entry games and proposes a root-n consistent estimator. The proposed method focuses on a two-player entry game using the example of discount retailers, where the potential profit of one retailer depends on the actions of its competitor, and the unobserved heterogeneity of the two retailers can be correlated. These two features lead to two challenges in identification and estimation: multiple equilibria and endogeneity. To address these two challenges, the paper provides a new identification and estimation strategy under a symmetry condition on unobservables. This new identification procedure requires neither an equilibrium selection rule of multiple equilibria nor parametric distributional assumptions on unobserved heterogeneities to solve the endogeneity problem. It also requires a weaker support condition than the existing literature. Following the identification argument, the paper proposes a semiparametric two-step estimation procedure using plug-in kernel estimators. Given the symmetry assumption, this paper shows that the proposed estimator is root-n consistent, unlike existing estimators for this model. Monte Carlo simulations demonstrate that the estimator performs well in moderate-sized samples. As an application, this paper applies the new method to the entry game of discount retailers in Jia (2008). The results complement the existing literature of entry games on semiparametric identification and estimation.
