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

Hui Liu, Yao Luo

arXiv 28 Jan 2025 · Econometrics

arXiv:2501.17251 · PDF · DOI · OpenAlex · Extracted main text

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.

Citation extraction

53
references
88
in-text mentions
53
distinct cited
3
self-citations
15,222
main-text words

appendix boundary found by appendix_command · 63% of the source is main text. Read the extracted text to check this.

Most heavily cited references

The works this paper leans on most, across its whole bibliography — not restricted to papers in our corpus. Ranked by composite intensity, which combines how often a work is mentioned, how many sections mention it, and how much of that falls in the main text rather than the appendix.

ReferenceIntensityMentionsSectionsMain text
1Berry, S., J. Levinsohn, and A. Pakes (1995) Automobile prices in market equilibrium0.9285380%
2Gao, S., R. Zheng, and T.-w. Hu (2012) Can increases in the cigarette tax rate be linked to cigarette retail prices? Solving mysteries related to the cigarette pricing…0.8746567%
3Zheng, R (2018) Tobacco Tax and Tobacco Economy in China0.8307657%
4Goodchild, M. and R. Zheng (2018) Early assessment of China’s 2015 tobacco tax increase0.81142100%
5Hitsch, G. J., A. Hortaçsu, and X. Lin (2019) Prices and promotions in u.s. retail markets: Evidence from big data0.64422100%
6Adams, B. and K. R. Williams (2019) Zone pricing in retail oligopoly0.64422100%
7Aguiar, V. H. and N. Kashaev (2021) Identification and estimation of discrete choice models with unobserved choice sets0.64422100%
8Bishop, J. A., L. Haiyong, and M. Qi (2007) Are Chinese smokers sensitive to price?0.64422100%
9Chib, S. and K. Shimizu (2023) Scalable estimation of multinomial response models with uncertain consideration sets0.64422100%
10Crawford, G. S., R. Griffith, A. Iaria, et al (2016) Demand estimation with unobserved choice set heterogeneity0.64422100%

Showing the top 10 of 53 scored citations.

Cited by, within the corpus

arXiv econ.EM papers that cite this one, ranked by how heavily they lean on it.

Citing paperIntensityMentionsSections
1Identification and Estimation of Demand Models with Endogenous Product Entry and Exit0.40511