TESTING MODELS OF DIFFERENTIATED PRODUCTS MARKETS: CONSOLIDATION IN THE CABLE TV INDUSTRY

David P. Byrne

International Economic Review, 2015, vol. 56, issue 3, 805-850

Abstract: Research on differentiated products markets often uses structural demand/supply models to identify firms' marginal costs as product‐level cost data are unavailable. Using unique demand and cost data from cable TV, I evaluate a differentiated products model's ability to identify marginal costs. I find firms systematically price below profit‐maximizing levels, leading to biases in the model's marginal cost estimates. I study the implications for merger simulations and find that these biases compromise estimates of merger‐related cost efficiencies, yet do not prevent these models from generating useful predictions of the price and nonprice effects of mergers.

Date: 2015
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.1111/iere.12123

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:wly:iecrev:v:56:y:2015:i:3:p:805-850

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.blackwell ... bs.asp?ref=0020-6598

Access Statistics for this article

International Economic Review is currently edited by Michael O'Riordan and Dirk Krueger

More articles in International Economic Review from Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association 160 McNeil Building, 3718 Locust Walk, Philadelphia, PA 19104-6297. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Wiley Content Delivery ().