Shi Qi

The impact of advertising regulation on industry: the cigarette advertising ban of 1971

This paper develops and estimates a dynamic oligopoly model of advertising in the cigarette industry. With this estimated model, I evaluate the impact of the 1971 TV/Radio advertising ban on the cigarette industry. A puzzling fact about this ban is that, while industry advertising spending decreased sharply immediately following its passage, spending then recovered and actually exceeded its pre-ban level within five years. While simple static models cannot account for such a turn of events, the rich dynamic model developed in this paper can. This paper exploits previously confidential micro data, now made public through tobacco litigation. In addition, the paper uses a new concept of Oblivious Equilibrium to handle intractable state space and accelerate equilibrium computation.

Stand by Me-Experiments on Help and Commitment in Coordination Games

We present experiments studying how high-ability individuals use help to foster efficient coordination. After an initial phase that traps groups in a low-productivity equilibrium, incentives to coordinate are increased, making it possible to escape this performance trap. The design varies whether high-ability individuals can offer help and, if so, whether they must commit to help for an extended period. If help is chosen on a round-by-round basis, the probability of escaping the performance trap is slightly reduced by allowing for help. The likelihood of success significantly improves if high-ability individuals must commit to help for an extended time. We develop and estimate a structural model of sophisticated learning that provides an explanation for why commitment is necessary. The key insight is that potential leaders who are overly optimistic about their ability to teach their followers are too fast to eliminate help in the absence of commitment. Data, as supplemental material, are available at http://dx.doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2015.2269 . This paper was accepted by Teck-Hua Ho, behavioral economics.