The widely-used estimator of Berry, Levinsohn and Pakes (1995) produces estimates of consumer preferences from a discrete-choice demand model with random coefficients, market-level demand shocks and endogenous prices. We derive numerical theory results characterizing the properties of the nested...

Is the variety of products supplied in markets a reflection of the diversity of consumers' preferences? In this paper, we argue that the distribution of durable goods offered in markets tends to be compressed relative to the distribution of consumers' underlying preferences. In particular, there...

When a product's product provision entails fixed costs, it will be made available only if a sufficient number of people want it. Some products are produced and consumed locally, so that provision requires not only a large group favoring the product but a large number nearby. Just as one has an...

We describe a regulatory framework that helps consumers who have difficulty sticking to their own long-run plans. Early Decision regulations help long-run preferences prevail by allowing consumers to partially commit to their long-run goals, making it harder for a momentary impulse to reverse...

We examine an economy in which the cost of consuming some goods can be reduced by making commitments to consumption levels independent of the state. For example, it is cheaper to produce housing services via owner-occupied than rented housing, but the transactions costs associated with the...

Limits on consumer attention give firms incentives to manipulate prospective buyers' allocation of attention. This paper models such attention manipulation and shows that it limits the ability of disclosure regulation to improve consumer welfare. Competitive information supply, from firms...

When empirical stock-adjustment models of manufacturers' inventories of finished goods are estimated, there appear to be two local minima in the sum of squared residuals functions. At one local minimum, the estimated adjustment speed is typically quite high; at the other, it is typically quite...

This paper develops and applies a novel test of the Holt, et al.(1961) linear quadratic inventory model. It is shown that a central property of the model is that a certain weighted sum of variances and covariances of production, sales and inventories must be nonnegative. The weights are the...

This paper develops an open-economy macroeconomic model which can be used to interpret the observed fluctuations in output, inventories,prices,and exchange rates in the medium-sized economies of the world. The model is consistent with the major empirical regularities that have been discovered in...

The basic assumption of this paper is an attempt to be specific about price formation while retaining a fixed-price, quantity-constrained equilibration in the short-run. The second theme of this paper is the role of inventories in macrodynamics a topic of long-recognized importance, but one...