IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/bla/randje/v52y2021i4p693-726.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Empirical properties of diversion ratios

Author

Listed:
  • Christopher Conlon
  • Julie Holland Mortimer

Abstract

The diversion ratio for products j and k is the fraction of consumers who leave product j after a price increase and switch to product k. Theoretically, it is expressed as the ratio of demand derivatives from a multi‐product firm's Bertrand‐Nash first‐order condition. In practice, diversion ratios are also measured from second‐choice data or customer‐switching surveys. We establish a LATE interpretation of diversion ratios, and show how diversion ratios are obtained from different interventions (price, quality, or assortment changes) and how those measures relate to one another and to underlying properties of demand.

Suggested Citation

  • Christopher Conlon & Julie Holland Mortimer, 2021. "Empirical properties of diversion ratios," RAND Journal of Economics, RAND Corporation, vol. 52(4), pages 693-726, December.
    • Handle: RePEc:bla:randje:v:52:y:2021:i:4:p:693-726
    DOI: 10.1111/1756-2171.12388
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.1111/1756-2171.12388
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1111/1756-2171.12388?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Capps, Cory & Dranove, David & Satterthwaite, Mark, 2003. "Competition and Market Power in Option Demand Markets," RAND Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 34(4), pages 737-763, Winter.
    2. Joshua D. Angrist & Jörn-Steffen Pischke, 2010. "The Credibility Revolution in Empirical Economics: How Better Research Design Is Taking the Con out of Econometrics," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 24(2), pages 3-30, Spring.
    3. Jean‐Pierre Dubé & Jeremy T. Fox & Che‐Lin Su, 2012. "Improving the Numerical Performance of Static and Dynamic Aggregate Discrete Choice Random Coefficients Demand Estimation," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 80(5), pages 2231-2267, September.
    4. Katherine Ho, 2006. "The welfare effects of restricted hospital choice in the US medical care market," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 21(7), pages 1039-1079.
    5. Steven T. Berry & Philip A. Haile, 2009. "Nonparametric Identification of Multinomial Choice Demand Models with Heterogeneous Consumers," Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers 1718, Cowles Foundation for Research in Economics, Yale University, revised Mar 2010.
    6. James J. Heckman, 2010. "Building Bridges between Structural and Program Evaluation Approaches to Evaluating Policy," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 48(2), pages 356-398, June.
    7. James H. Stock, 2010. "The Other Transformation in Econometric Practice: Robust Tools for Inference," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 24(2), pages 83-94, Spring.
    8. Kate Ho & Robin S. Lee, 2019. "Equilibrium Provider Networks: Bargaining and Exclusion in Health Care Markets," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 109(2), pages 473-522, February.
    9. Town, Robert & Vistnes, Gregory, 2001. "Hospital competition in HMO networks," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 20(5), pages 733-753, September.
    10. Thomas J. Kane & Douglas O. Staiger, 2008. "Estimating Teacher Impacts on Student Achievement: An Experimental Evaluation," NBER Working Papers 14607, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    11. Amitabh Chandra & Amy Finkelstein & Adam Sacarny & Chad Syverson, 2013. "Healthcare Exceptionalism? Productivity and Allocation in the U.S. Healthcare Sector," NBER Working Papers 19200, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    12. James J. Heckman & Edward Vytlacil, 2005. "Structural Equations, Treatment Effects, and Econometric Policy Evaluation," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 73(3), pages 669-738, May.
    13. Gautam Gowrisankaran & Aviv Nevo & Robert Town, 2015. "Mergers When Prices Are Negotiated: Evidence from the Hospital Industry," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 105(1), pages 172-203, January.
    14. Nathan H. Miller & Conor Ryan & Marc Remer & Gloria Sheu, 2012. "Approximating the Price Effects of Mergers: Numerical Evidence and an Empirical Application," EAG Discussions Papers 201208, Department of Justice, Antitrust Division.
    15. Keith Marzilli Ericson & Amanda Starc, 2015. "Measuring Consumer Valuation of Limited Provider Networks," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 105(5), pages 115-119, May.
    16. Steven T. Berry & Philip A. Haile, 2014. "Identification in Differentiated Products Markets Using Market Level Data," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 82(5), pages 1749-1797, September.
    17. Dennis W. Carlton, 2010. "Revising The Horizontal Merger Guidelines," Journal of Competition Law and Economics, Oxford University Press, vol. 6(3), pages 619-652.
    18. Aviv Nevo, 2000. "Mergers with Differentiated Products: The Case of the Ready-to-Eat Cereal Industry," RAND Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 31(3), pages 395-421, Autumn.
    19. Jaffe Sonia & Weyl E. Glen, 2010. "Linear Demand Systems are Inconsistent with Discrete Choice," The B.E. Journal of Theoretical Economics, De Gruyter, vol. 10(1), pages 1-8, December.
    20. Nevo, Aviv, 2001. "Measuring Market Power in the Ready-to-Eat Cereal Industry," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 69(2), pages 307-342, March.
    21. Christopher T. Conlon & Julie Holland Mortimer, 2010. "Effects of Product Availability: Experimental Evidence," NBER Working Papers 16506, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    22. Gregory S. Crawford & Ali Yurukoglu, 2012. "The Welfare Effects of Bundling in Multichannel Television Markets," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 102(2), pages 643-685, April.
    23. Nathan H. Miller & Marc Remer & Conor Ryan & Gloria Sheu, 2016. "Pass-Through and the Prediction of Merger Price Effects," Journal of Industrial Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 64(4), pages 683-709, December.
    24. Steven Berry & James Levinsohn & Ariel Pakes, 2004. "Differentiated Products Demand Systems from a Combination of Micro and Macro Data: The New Car Market," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 112(1), pages 68-105, February.
    25. Timothy B. Armstrong, 2016. "Large Market Asymptotics for Differentiated Product Demand Estimators With Economic Models of Supply," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 84, pages 1961-1980, September.
    26. James Levinsohn & Steven Berry & Ariel Pakes, 1999. "Voluntary Export Restraints on Automobiles: Evaluating a Trade Policy," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 89(3), pages 400-430, June.
    27. Raj Chetty & John N. Friedman & Jonah E. Rockoff, 2014. "Measuring the Impacts of Teachers I: Evaluating Bias in Teacher Value-Added Estimates," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 104(9), pages 2593-2632, September.
    28. Nathan H. Miller & Matthew C. Weinberg, 2017. "Understanding the Price Effects of the MillerCoors Joint Venture," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 85(6), pages 1763-1791, November.
    29. Christopher T. Conlon & Julie Holland Mortimer, 2013. "Demand Estimation under Incomplete Product Availability," American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 5(4), pages 1-30, November.
    30. J. Levin & L. Einav, 2012. "Empirical Industrial Organization: A Progress Report," Voprosy Ekonomiki, NP Voprosy Ekonomiki, issue 1.
    31. Farrell Joseph & Shapiro Carl, 2010. "Antitrust Evaluation of Horizontal Mergers: An Economic Alternative to Market Definition," The B.E. Journal of Theoretical Economics, De Gruyter, vol. 10(1), pages 1-41, March.
    32. Joshua D. Angrist & Kathryn Graddy & Guido W. Imbens, 2000. "The Interpretation of Instrumental Variables Estimators in Simultaneous Equations Models with an Application to the Demand for Fish," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 67(3), pages 499-527.
    33. Graeme Reynolds & Chris Walters, 2008. "The Use Of Customer Surveys For Market Definition And The Competitive Assessment Of Horizontal Mergers," Journal of Competition Law and Economics, Oxford University Press, vol. 4(2), pages 411-431.
    34. Raj Chetty, 2009. "Sufficient Statistics for Welfare Analysis: A Bridge Between Structural and Reduced-Form Methods," Annual Review of Economics, Annual Reviews, vol. 1(1), pages 451-488, May.
    35. Hansen, Lars Peter & Heaton, John & Yaron, Amir, 1996. "Finite-Sample Properties of Some Alternative GMM Estimators," Journal of Business & Economic Statistics, American Statistical Association, vol. 14(3), pages 262-280, July.
    36. Robert Willig, 2011. "Unilateral Competitive Effects of Mergers: Upward Pricing Pressure, Product Quality, and Other Extensions," Review of Industrial Organization, Springer;The Industrial Organization Society, vol. 39(1), pages 19-38, August.
    37. Werden, Gregory J, 1996. "A Robust Test for Consumer Welfare Enhancing Mergers among Sellers of Differentiated Products," Journal of Industrial Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 44(4), pages 409-413, December.
    38. Michael P. Keane, 2010. "A Structural Perspective on the Experimentalist School," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 24(2), pages 47-58, Spring.
    39. Richard Schmalensee, 2009. "Should New Merger Guidelines Give UPP Market Definition?," Antitrust Chronicle, Competition Policy International, vol. 12.
    40. Kenneth L. Judd & Ben Skrainka, 2011. "High performance quadrature rules: how numerical integration affects a popular model of product differentiation," CeMMAP working papers CWP03/11, Centre for Microdata Methods and Practice, Institute for Fiscal Studies.
    41. Sonia Jaffe & E. Glen Weyl, 2013. "The First-Order Approach to Merger Analysis," American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 5(4), pages 188-218, November.
    42. Christopher A. Sims, 2010. "But Economics Is Not an Experimental Science," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 24(2), pages 59-68, Spring.
    43. Steven T. Berry, 1994. "Estimating Discrete-Choice Models of Product Differentiation," RAND Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 25(2), pages 242-262, Summer.
    44. Katherine Ho, 2009. "Insurer-Provider Networks in the Medical Care Market," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 99(1), pages 393-430, March.
    45. Christopher Conlon & Jeff Gortmaker, 2020. "Best practices for differentiated products demand estimation with PyBLP," RAND Journal of Economics, RAND Corporation, vol. 51(4), pages 1108-1161, December.
    46. Aviv Nevo & Michael D. Whinston, 2010. "Taking the Dogma out of Econometrics: Structural Modeling and Credible Inference," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 24(2), pages 69-82, Spring.
    47. Alberto Abadie & Guido W. Imbens, 2006. "Large Sample Properties of Matching Estimators for Average Treatment Effects," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 74(1), pages 235-267, January.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Christopher T. Conlon & Julie Holland Mortimer, 2013. "An Experimental Approach to Merger Evaluation," NBER Working Papers 19703, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    2. Steven T. Berry & Philip A. Haile, 2021. "Foundations of Demand Estimation," Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers 2301, Cowles Foundation for Research in Economics, Yale University.
    3. Miravete, Eugenio J. & Seim, Katja & Thurk, Jeff, 2023. "Pass-through and tax incidence in differentiated product markets," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 90(C).
    4. Christopher T. Conlon & Julie Holland Mortimer, 2013. "Demand Estimation under Incomplete Product Availability," American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 5(4), pages 1-30, November.
    5. Nathan H. Miller & Gloria Sheu, 2021. "Quantitative Methods for Evaluating the Unilateral Effects of Mergers," Review of Industrial Organization, Springer;The Industrial Organization Society, vol. 58(1), pages 143-177, February.
    6. Victor Aguirregabiria & Margaret Slade, 2017. "Empirical models of firms and industries," Canadian Journal of Economics/Revue canadienne d'économique, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 50(5), pages 1445-1488, December.
    7. Mogens Fosgerau & Julien Monardo & André de Palma, 2024. "The Inverse Product Differentiation Logit Model," American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 16(4), pages 329-370, November.
    8. Eugenio J. Miravete & Katja Seim & Jeff Thurk, 2018. "Market Power and the Laffer Curve," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 86(5), pages 1651-1687, September.
    9. Christopher T. Conlon & Julie Holland Mortimer, 2010. "Effects of Product Availability: Experimental Evidence," NBER Working Papers 16506, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    10. Matthew Backus & Christopher Conlon & Michael Sinkinson, 2021. "Common Ownership and Competition in the Ready-to-Eat Cereal Industry," NBER Working Papers 28350, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    11. Friberg, Richard & Romahn, André, 2015. "Divestiture requirements as a tool for competition policy: A case from the Swedish beer market," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 42(C), pages 1-18.
    12. Xavier D’Haultfœuille & Isis Durrmeyer & Philippe Février, 2019. "Automobile Prices in Market Equilibrium with Unobserved Price Discrimination," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 86(5), pages 1973-1998.
    13. Jéssica Dutra & Tarun Sabarwal, 2020. "Antitrust analysis with upward pricing pressure and cost efficiencies," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 15(1), pages 1-31, January.
    14. Byrne, David P. & Imai, Susumu & Jain, Neelam & Sarafidis, Vasilis, 2022. "Instrument-free identification and estimation of differentiated products models using cost data," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 228(2), pages 278-301.
    15. Tommaso Valletti & Hans Zenger, 2021. "Mergers with Differentiated Products: Where Do We Stand?," Review of Industrial Organization, Springer;The Industrial Organization Society, vol. 58(1), pages 179-212, February.
    16. Stuart V. Craig & Matthew Grennan & Ashley Swanson, 2021. "Mergers and marginal costs: New evidence on hospital buyer power," RAND Journal of Economics, RAND Corporation, vol. 52(1), pages 151-178, March.
    17. Martin Gaynor & Kate Ho & Robert J. Town, 2015. "The Industrial Organization of Health-Care Markets," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 53(2), pages 235-284, June.
    18. Isaiah Andrews & Matthew Gentzkow & Jesse M. Shapiro, 2017. "Measuring the Sensitivity of Parameter Estimates to Estimation Moments," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 132(4), pages 1553-1592.
    19. Steven T. Berry & Philip A. Haile, 2014. "Identification in Differentiated Products Markets Using Market Level Data," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 82, pages 1749-1797, September.
    20. Wang, Ao, 2021. "A BLP Demand Model of Product-Level Market Shares with Complementarity," The Warwick Economics Research Paper Series (TWERPS) 1351, University of Warwick, Department of Economics.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • L00 - Industrial Organization - - General - - - General
    • L4 - Industrial Organization - - Antitrust Issues and Policies
    • L40 - Industrial Organization - - Antitrust Issues and Policies - - - General
    • D4 - Microeconomics - - Market Structure, Pricing, and Design
    • D43 - Microeconomics - - Market Structure, Pricing, and Design - - - Oligopoly and Other Forms of Market Imperfection

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:bla:randje:v:52:y:2021:i:4:p:693-726. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Wiley Content Delivery (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/randdus.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.