题目： Welcome! We Have a New Menu: Measuring Product Responses to Competition

主讲人:  Nathan Schiff (Associate Professor of Economics, SUFE)

时间：2017年10月18日（周三） 1：30 pm

地点：国际经管学院会议室（诚明楼三层）

主办方：国际经济管理学院

Abstract：

This paper measures the response to new competition using a novel longitudinal dataset of restaurant menus in New York City. We use a technique from computer science to obtain a scalar measure of the pairwise distance between restaurants in product  characteristic space based on differences in menu text. This particularly detailed measure of characteristic space allows for precise measurement of price and product changes in the menu of incumbent restaurants responding to entry. We address the endogeneity of location choice by matching “treated” incumbent restaurants facing competition from a new entrant with a “control” group of incumbent restaurants that have similar menus and location characteristics but no new competition. We seek to provide some of the first evidence on the response to competition in markets with substantial product differentiation, many firms, and rapid turnover.

Biography

Nathan Schiff is an associate professor at Shanghai University of Finance and Economics. He works on Urban Economics, Industrial Organization and Public Economics. For more information, please see his website at https://nathanschiff.com/