We present an empirical study of spatial competition and a methodology to estimate demand for products with unobservable characteristics. Using panel data, we estimate a discrete-choice model with latent-product attributes and unobserved heterogeneous consumer preferences. Our application of the...

This paper investigates the role of stories in TV ads. It focuses on the effect of three theoretically-established story elements, that have not been explored previously, on actual consumers’ reactions to advertising. The three elements are “conflict” between two forces, “turning...

This paper brings empirical evidence that the positive effect of exposure to advertising on consumers' tendency to purchase a product is due to the informative nature of ads and to consumers' risk-aversion. We show that the findings of previous studies that advertising intensity is an element in...

This study models advertising content as a noisy signal on product attributes. Contrary to previous empirical studies that modeled advertising only as part of the consumer's utility function, we formulate advertising also as an element in her information set. This approach yields the following...

Consumers in many markets face a growing variety of products grouped under different umbrella brands, and can access vast amounts of information about these products. This may result in increasing product-level competition between firms. However, some observers argue that the increase in the...

Hyper-media, owing to its ability to embed and link to information from other sources, has become an important modality for consuming news and information. Yet there remains a dearth of empirical research seeking to explain and forecast consumer behavior in this context. We develop a structural...

This paper examines a mechanism that underlies both the political business cycle and the cycle in non-economic policies executed by politicians. We show that if rational voters suffer from forgetfulness (a noise in the memory). then government expenditure on the production of public good...

We present an empirical study of spatial competition and a methodology to estimate demand for products with unobservable characteristics. Using panel data, we estimate a discrete choice model with latent product attributes and unobserved heterogenous consumer preferences. Our application of the...