IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/arx/papers/2501.17251.html

Demand Analysis under Price Rigidity and Endogenous Assortment: An Application to China's Tobacco Industry

Author

Listed:
  • Hui Liu
  • Yao Luo

Abstract

We observe nominal price rigidity in tobacco markets across China. The monopolistic seller responds by adjusting product assortments, which remain unobserved by the analyst. We develop and estimate a logit demand model that incorporates assortment discrimination and nominal price rigidity. We find that consumers are significantly more responsive to price changes than conventional models predict. Simulated tax increases reveal that neglecting the role of endogenous assortments results in underestimations of the decline in higher-tier product sales, incorrect directional predictions of lower-tier product sales, and overestimation of tax revenue by more than 50%. Finally, we extend our methodology to settings with competition and random coefficient models.

Suggested Citation

  • Hui Liu & Yao Luo, 2025. "Demand Analysis under Price Rigidity and Endogenous Assortment: An Application to China's Tobacco Industry," Papers 2501.17251, arXiv.org.
    • Handle: RePEc:arx:papers:2501.17251
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://arxiv.org/pdf/2501.17251
    File Function: Latest version
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. 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.
    2. Victor H. Aguiar & Nail Kashaev, 2025. "Identification and Estimation of Discrete Choice Models with Unobserved Choice Sets," Journal of Business & Economic Statistics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 43(1), pages 204-215, January.
    3. Pierre Dubois & Morten Sæthre, 2020. "On the Effect of Parallel Trade on Manufacturers' and Retailers' Profits in the Pharmaceutical Sector," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 88(6), pages 2503-2545, November.
    4. Paola Manzini & Marco Mariotti, 2014. "Stochastic Choice and Consideration Sets," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 82(3), pages 1153-1176, May.
    5. Ravi Anupindi & Maqbool Dada & Sachin Gupta, 1998. "Estimation of Consumer Demand with Stock-Out Based Substitution: An Application to Vending Machine Products," Marketing Science, INFORMS, vol. 17(4), pages 406-423.
    6. Victor Aguirregabiria, 1999. "The Dynamics of Markups and Inventories in Retailing Firms," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 66(2), pages 275-308.
    7. Aguirregabiria, Victor & Iaria, Alessandro & Sokullu, Senay, 2023. "Identification and Estimation of Demand Models with Endogenous Product Entry and Exit," CEPR Discussion Papers 18398, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    8. Stefano DellaVigna & Matthew Gentzkow, 2019. "Uniform Pricing in U.S. Retail Chains," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 134(4), pages 2011-2084.
    9. Lu, Zhentong, 2022. "Estimating multinomial choice models with unobserved choice sets," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 226(2), pages 368-398.
    10. Michaela Draganska & Michael Mazzeo & Katja Seim, 2009. "Beyond plain vanilla: Modeling joint product assortment and pricing decisions," Quantitative Marketing and Economics (QME), Springer, vol. 7(2), pages 105-146, June.
    11. Nevo, Aviv, 2001. "Measuring Market Power in the Ready-to-Eat Cereal Industry," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 69(2), pages 307-342, March.
    12. BISHOP, John A. & Liu, Haiyong & Meng, Qi, 2007. "Are Chinese smokers sensitive to price?," China Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 18(2), pages 113-121.
    13. Yao Luo & Isabelle Perrigne & Quang Vuong, 2018. "Structural Analysis of Nonlinear Pricing," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 126(6), pages 2523-2568.
    14. Toshiaki Iizuka, 2012. "Physician Agency and Adoption of Generic Pharmaceuticals," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 102(6), pages 2826-2858, October.
    15. Yao Luo, 2023. "Bundling and nonlinear pricing in telecommunications," RAND Journal of Economics, RAND Corporation, vol. 54(2), pages 268-298, June.
    16. 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.
    17. 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.
    18. 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.
    19. Brian Adams & Kevin R. Williams, 2019. "Zone Pricing in Retail Oligopoly," American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 11(1), pages 124-156, February.
    20. Berry, Steven & Levinsohn, James & Pakes, Ariel, 1995. "Automobile Prices in Market Equilibrium," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 63(4), pages 841-890, July.
    21. Lance, Peter M. & Akin, John S. & Dow, William H. & Loh, Chung-Ping, 2004. "Is cigarette smoking in poorer nations highly sensitive to price?: Evidence from Russia and China," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 23(1), pages 173-189, January.
    22. Junji Xiao & Xiaolan Zhou & Wei‐Min Hu, 2017. "Welfare Analysis Of The Vehicle Quota System In China," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 58, pages 617-650, May.
    23. Hong Liu & John A. Rizzo & Qi Sun & Fang Wu, 2015. "How Do Smokers Respond to Cigarette Taxes? Evidence from China's Cigarette Industry," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 24(10), pages 1314-1330, October.
    24. Kalyan Talluri & Garrett van Ryzin, 2004. "Revenue Management Under a General Discrete Choice Model of Consumer Behavior," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 50(1), pages 15-33, January.
    25. Crawford, Gregory S. & Griffith, Rachel & Iaria, Alessandro, 2021. "A survey of preference estimation with unobserved choice set heterogeneity," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 222(1), pages 4-43.
    26. Junji Xiao & Xiaolan Zhou & Wei‐Min Hu, 2017. "Welfare Analysis Of The Vehicle Quota System In China," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 58(2), pages 617-650, May.
    27. Kfir Eliaz & Ran Spiegler, 2011. "Consideration Sets and Competitive Marketing," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 78(1), pages 235-262.
    28. Günter J. Hitsch & Ali Hortaçsu & Xiliang Lin, 2019. "Prices and Promotions in U.S. Retail Markets: Evidence from Big Data," NBER Working Papers 26306, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    29. Dubois, Pierre & Lasio, Laura, 2014. "Identifying Industry Margins with Unobserved Price Constraints: Structural Estimation on Pharmaceuticals," IDEI Working Papers 823, Institut d'Économie Industrielle (IDEI), Toulouse.
    30. Pierre Dubois & Laura Lasio, 2018. "Identifying Industry Margins with Price Constraints: Structural Estimation on Pharmaceuticals," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 108(12), pages 3685-3724, December.
    31. Andrés Musalem & Marcelo Olivares & Eric T. Bradlow & Christian Terwiesch & Daniel Corsten, 2010. "Structural Estimation of the Effect of Out-of-Stocks," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 56(7), pages 1180-1197, July.
    32. Gaurab Aryal & Federico Zincenko, 2014. "Identification and Estimation of Multidimensional Screening," Papers 1411.6250, arXiv.org, revised Oct 2024.
    33. Tenn, Steven & Yun, John M., 2008. "Biases in demand analysis due to variation in retail distribution," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 26(4), pages 984-997, July.
    34. Nail Kashaev & Natalia Lazzati & Ruli Xiao, 2023. "Peer Effects in Consideration and Preferences," Papers 2310.12272, arXiv.org, revised Jan 2024.
    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. Pierre Dubois & Morten Sæthre, 2020. "On the Effect of Parallel Trade on Manufacturers' and Retailers' Profits in the Pharmaceutical Sector," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 88(6), pages 2503-2545, November.
    2. Pesendorfer, Martin & Schiraldi, Pasquale & Silva-Junior, Daniel, 2023. "Omitted budget constraint bias in discrete-choice demand models," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 86(C).
    3. Allen, Roy & Rehbeck, John, 2024. "Latent utility and permutation invariance: A revealed preference approach," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 244(1).
    4. Aguirregabiria, Victor & Iaria, Alessandro & Sokullu, Senay, 2023. "Identification and Estimation of Demand Models with Endogenous Product Entry and Exit," CEPR Discussion Papers 18398, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    5. Pesendorfer, Martin & Schiraldi, Pasquale & Silva-Junior, Daniel, 2023. "Omitted budget constraint bias in discrete-choice demand models," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 117353, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    6. Ashish Kabra & Elena Belavina & Karan Girotra, 2020. "Bike-Share Systems: Accessibility and Availability," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 66(9), pages 3803-3824, September.
    7. Griffith, Rachel & Crawford, Gregory & Iaria, Alessandro, 2016. "Preference Estimation with Unobserved Choice Set Heterogeneity using Sufficient Sets," CEPR Discussion Papers 11675, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    8. Gustavo Vulcano & Garrett van Ryzin & Richard Ratliff, 2012. "Estimating Primary Demand for Substitutable Products from Sales Transaction Data," Operations Research, INFORMS, vol. 60(2), pages 313-334, April.
    9. Lu, Zhentong, 2022. "Estimating multinomial choice models with unobserved choice sets," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 226(2), pages 368-398.
    10. Wan, Mingchao & Huang, Yihui & Zhao, Lei & Deng, Tianhu & Fransoo, Jan C., 2018. "Demand estimation under multi-store multi-product substitution in high density traditional retail," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 266(1), pages 99-111.
    11. Reynaert, Mathias & Verboven, Frank, 2014. "Improving the performance of random coefficients demand models: The role of optimal instruments," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 179(1), pages 83-98.
    12. Dubois, Pierre & Gandhi, Ashvin & Vasserman, Shoshana, 2022. "Bargaining and International Reference Pricing in the Pharmaceutical Industry," Research Papers 3889, Stanford University, Graduate School of Business.
    13. Juan Pablo Atal & José Ignacio Cuesta & Felipe González & Cristóbal Otero, 2024. "The Economics of the Public Option: Evidence from Local Pharmaceutical Markets," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 114(3), pages 615-644, March.
    14. Azrieli, Yaron & Rehbeck, John N., 0. "Marginal stochastic choice," Theoretical Economics, Econometric Society.
    15. Hickman, William & Mortimer, Julie Holland, 2016. "Demand Estimation with Availability Variation," SocArXiv qe69j, Center for Open Science.
    16. Crawford, Gregory S. & Griffith, Rachel & Iaria, Alessandro, 2021. "A survey of preference estimation with unobserved choice set heterogeneity," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 222(1), pages 4-43.
    17. Lopez, Rigoberto A. & Mohapatra, Debashrita & Steinbach, Sandro, 2024. "Mergers, store locations, and jobs: Evidence from the food retail industry," 2024 Annual Meeting, July 28-30, New Orleans, LA 343711, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association.
    18. Philippe Choné & Lionel Wilner, 2022. "Financial Incentives and Competitive Pressure: The Case of the Hospital Industry," Journal of the European Economic Association, European Economic Association, vol. 20(2), pages 626-666.
    19. Zhu, Chen & Lopez, Rigoberto A. & Liu, Xiaoou, 2019. "Consumer responses to front-of-package labeling in the presence of information spillovers," Food Policy, Elsevier, vol. 86(C), pages 1-1.
    20. Crawford, Gregory S., 2012. "Endogenous product choice: A progress report," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 30(3), pages 315-320.

    More about this item

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:arx:papers:2501.17251. 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: arXiv administrators (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://arxiv.org/ .

    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.