“经济学系列讲座”第45期：Demand Estimation With Foldable Menu: A Case Study of China’s Tobacco Industry

主讲人：Hui Liu 加拿大多伦多大学经济系

时间：2022年5月6日上午09:00-10:00

线上：腾讯会议号：432-582-109

线上：会议链接：https://meeting.tencent.com/dm/cuAsYvd4PPCf

主持：张中祥 天津大学马寅初经济学院创院院长、卓越教授，国家能源、环境和产业经济研究院院长

报告简介

Information about product availabilities is necessary for the demand estimation of products with varying availabilities, but such data is not always observable. When firmsendogenously choose product assortments to maximize expected profit, we can recover unobservable product availabilities from firms’ profit maximization conditions. Searching for optimal (profit-maximizing) assortment can be very time-consuming because the total number of assortments increases exponentially with the number of products. I show that firms only need to choose from a foldable menu, where in the number of assortments equals the number of products. I provide an empirical application of the foldable menu model on China’s tobacco industry. My results show that ignoring varying product availabilities leads to underestimated price elasticity and thus false tax policy implications. Making all cigarettes available has positive effects on consumer welfare and cigarette sales but negatively affects wholesale profits.

报告人简介

Hui Liu is a Ph.D. candidate in economics from the University of Toronto.His research interests are in industrial organization, applied microeconomics and econometrics. His current research focuses on random coefficient demand estimation of products with varying availabilities.