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Demand Estimation with Heterogeneous Consumers and Unobserved Product Characteristics: A Hedonic Approach

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Author Info
C. Lanier Benkard
Patrick Bajari
Abstract

We study the identification and estimation of Gorman-Lancaster style hedonic models of demand for differentiated products for the case when one product characteristic is not observed. Our identification and estimation strategy is a two-step approach in the spirit of Rosen (1974). Relative to Rosen's approach, we generalize the first stage estimation to allow for a single dimensional unobserved product characteristic, and also allow the hedonic pricing function to have a general, non-additive structure. In the second stage, if the product space is continuous and the functional form of utility is known then there exists an inversion between the consumer's choices and her preference parameters. This inversion can be used to recover the distribution of random coefficients nonparametrically. For the more common case when the set of products is finite, we use the revealed preference conditions from the hedonic model to develop a Gibbs sampling estimator for the distribution of random coefficients. We apply our methods to estimating personal computer demand.

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Paper provided by National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc in its series NBER Working Papers with number 10278.

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Date of creation: Feb 2004
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Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:10278

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L0 - Industrial Organization - - General
D0 - Microeconomics - - General

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  2. Charles F. Manski, 1997. "Monotone Treatment Response," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 65(6), pages 1311-1334, November.
  3. Steven Berry & James Levinsohn & Ariel Pakes, 1998. "Differentiated Products Demand Systems from a Combination of Micro and Macro Data: The New Car Market," NBER Working Papers 6481, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  4. Patrick Bajari & Matthew E. Kahn, 2002. "Estimating Housing Demand with an Application to Explaining Racial Segregation in Cities," Working Papers 02011, Stanford University, Department of Economics. [Downloadable!]
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  5. Guido W. Imbens & Whitney K. Newey, 2002. "Identification and Estimation of Triangular Simultaneous Equations Models Without Additivity," NBER Technical Working Papers 0285, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  6. Amil Petrin, 2002. "Quantifying the Benefits of New Products: The Case of the Minivan," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 110(4), pages 705-729, August. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  7. Ivar Ekeland & James J. Heckman & Lars Nesheim, 2004. "Identification and Estimation of Hedonic Models," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 112(S1), pages S60-S109, February. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  8. Caplin, Andrew & Nalebuff, Barry, 1991. "Aggregation and Imperfect Competition: On the Existence of Equilibrium," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 59(1), pages 25-59, January. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  9. Patrick Bayer & Robert McMillan & Kim Rueben, 2004. "An Equilibrium Model of Sorting in an Urban Housing Market," NBER Working Papers 10865, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  10. Epple, Dennis, 1987. "Hedonic Prices and Implicit Markets: Estimating Demand and Supply Functions for Differentiated Products," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 95(1), pages 59-80, February. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  13. Benkard, C. Lanier & Bajari, Patrick, 2003. "Hedonic Price Indexes with Unobserved Product Characteristics, and Application to PC's," Research Papers 1841, Stanford University, Graduate School of Business. [Downloadable!]
  14. Geweke, John, 1996. "Monte carlo simulation and numerical integration," Handbook of Computational Economics, in: H. M. Amman & D. A. Kendrick & J. Rust (ed.), Handbook of Computational Economics, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 15, pages 731-800 Elsevier. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  15. Rosen, Sherwin, 1974. "Hedonic Prices and Implicit Markets: Product Differentiation in Pure Competition," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 82(1), pages 34-55, Jan.-Feb.. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  18. 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. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  20. C. Lanier Benkard & Patrick Bajari, 2003. "Hedonic Price Indexes with Unobserved Product Characteristics, and Application to PC's," NBER Working Papers 9980, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  1. Bajari, Patrick & Benkard, C. Lanier & Levin, Jonathan, 2007. "Estimating Dynamic Models of Imperfect Competition," Research Papers 1852r1, Stanford University, Graduate School of Business. [Downloadable!]
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  2. Laura Blow & Martin Browning & Ian Crawford, 2006. "Revealed Preference Analysis of Characteristics Models," Economics Series Working Papers 282, University of Oxford, Department of Economics. [Downloadable!]
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  3. Christos Genakos, 2004. "DIFFERENTIAL MERGER EFFECTS: The Case of the Personal Computer Industry," STICERD - Economics of Industry Papers 39, Suntory and Toyota International Centres for Economics and Related Disciplines, LSE. [Downloadable!]
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