Course overview. Requirements and expectations .
Main Topics of the class: a brief overview.
Models of differentiated product markets.
Static models of interactions.
Dynamic models of interactions
Economic motivation for demand models for differentiated product markets.
Basic utility-based model of consumers' behavior.
Rationale for modeling ``shortcuts''.
Discussion of the approach to estimation of the model.
Choice of specification and instruments.
Policy analysis: counterfactual modeling of firm behavior and introduction of new products.
Welfare and revenue analysis.
Technical challenges: an outline of work for future classes
Computational aspects of structural modeling: introduction
Computer arithmetic and computational errors
Notion of algorithmic complexity
Computer representation of functions
Approximation in multi-dimensional spaces
Stochastic numerical integration
Introductory information about pseudo-random numbers
Independence sampling, the Gibbs sampler, the Hastings-Metropolis algorithm
Assessing numerical accuracy in Markov Chain Monte-Carlo
Quadrature methods of numerical integration
Interpolation and approximation of integrals
Polynomial approximation and related accelerated integration methods
Numerical differentiation
Structural analysis of static games: introductory examples
Parametric assumptions and structural inference
Static games of complete information: strategies and equilibria
Indeterminacy of realized equilibria and inference problems
Inference with multiple equilibria with no additional information
Inference with explicit equilibrium refinement mechanism
Estimation of games with multiple equilibria: technical challenges
Some algorithms for computing equilibria in static games
Static games of incomplete information
Parametric assumptions and structural inference
Observable actions, best responses and equilibria
Multiple equilibria in games of incomplete information solving non-polynomial systems of equations
Estimation of games with multiple equilibria: technical challenges
Two-stage estimation of static games
One-stqge conditional moment-based estimation
Analysis of auctions
Common auction formats and structure of information
Observable actions, best responses and equilibria
Revenue equivalence results and welfare analysis
Structural estimation of primitive characteristics
Two-stage estimation in auction games
Inference in auctions with assymetry
Identification in auctions in the presense of unobserved characteristics
Observable actions, best responses and equilibria
Dynamic behavior in auctions
Auctions on the Internet: theory and evidence
Analysis of dynamic discrete decision processes
Computational problem
Structure of the decision problem and econometric specification
Econometric estimation procedures and their properties
Slides for Lecture 8
Lecture 9
Estimation methods for discrete dynamic games
Dynamic decision problem as a conditional moment equation
Semiparametric and non-parametric estimation of conditional moment functionals
Notion of semiparametric efficiency and structure of efficient estimation for discrete dynamic games
Slides for Lecture 8