This paper develops an econometric model of firm entry, competition, and exit in oligopolistic markets. The model has an essentially unique symmetric Markov-perfect equilibrium, which can be computed very quickly. We show that its primitives are identified from market-level data on the number of...

This paper develops an econometric model of industry dynamics for concentrated markets that can be estimated very quickly from market-level panel data on the number of producers and consumers using a nested fixed-point algorithm. We show that the model has an essentially unique symmetric...

This paper proposes and tests a model of supermarket competition based upon John Sutton's (1991) endogenous fixed cost (EFC) framework. The relevance of the EFC framework to supermarket competition stems from the industry's surprisingly uniform competitive structure: irrespective of the size of...

This chapter reviews the literature which has developed around the ‘bounds approach’ to market structure over the past fifteen years. The focus of this literature lies in explaining cross-industry differences in concentration, and in the size distribution of firms. One of the main ideas...

This paper considers the effects of raising the cost of entry for a potential competitor on infinite-horizon Markov-perfect duopoly dynamics with ongoing demand uncertainty. All entrants serving the model industry incur sunk costs, and exit avoids future fixed costs. We focus on the unique...

Slow firm entry over the business cycle causes measured TFP to vary endogenously because incumbent firms bear shocks. Our main theorem states that imperfect competition and dynamic firm entry are necessary and sufficient conditions for these endogenous productivity fluctuations. The result...