Vrinda Kadiyali

The effect of a magazine’s free digital content on its print circulation: Cannibalization or complementarity?

We examine how offering digital content affects demand for print magazines. Using a searchable website archive, we measure the digital content offered by a sample of US consumer magazines from 1996-2001. We find strong evidence that digital content cannibalizes print sales. On average, a magazines print circulation declines about three percent when it offers a website. However, the effect varies with the type of digital content offered. Offering digital access to the entire contents of the current print magazine reduces print sales by about nine percent. We find no evidence that digital content complements print magazines. These results are robust to including controls for unobserved magazine, category, and time effects, as well as controls for the impact of contemporaneous price changes and other factors.

Entry-Deterring Capacity in the Texas Lodging Industry

This paper empirically tests whether capacity is used to deter entry and whether the amount invested in entry-deterring capacity is related to market concentration and market presence. We use a unique dataset containing 3,830 lodging properties in Texas from 1991 through 1997. We find that there is higher investment in capacity relative to demand (i.e., idle capacity) in markets with a larger Herfindahl index and by firms with a larger share of market capacity. These results are consistent with the entry deterrence literature that suggests firms in more concentrated markets and firms with a larger market share have greater incentive to invest in entry-deterring capacity.

Driving fatalities after 9/11: a hidden cost of terrorism

We show that the publics response to terrorist threats can have unintended consequences that rival the attacks themselves in severity. Driving fatalities increased significantly after the 11 September 2001 terrorist attacks, events that prompted many travellers to substitute road transportation for safer air transportation. After controlling for time trends, weather, road conditions and other factors, we find that travellers’ response to 9/11 resulted in 327 driving deaths per month in late 2001. Moreover, while the effect of 9/11 weakened over time, as many as 2300 driving deaths may be attributable to the attacks.

Exchange rate pass-through for strategic pricing and advertising: An empirical analysis of the U.S. photographic film industry

Abstract This paper builds a model in the “new empirical industrial organization” framework [Bresnahan, T., 1989. Industries and Market Power. In: Schmalensee, R., Willig, R. (Eds.), Handbook of Industrial Organization. North Holland, Amsterdam.] to estimate exchange rate pass-through in price and advertising. Price-cost margins, market structure and firm conduct are estimated endogenously, allowing for precise estimation of the degree of, and reasons for, incomplete pass-through. I demonstrate that price and advertising pass-through are functions of demand, cost and market conduct in the short run. In the long run, the market conduct and cost technologies are, in turn, determined by the exchange rate movements.

Endogeneity and Simultaneity in Competitive Pricing and Advertising: A Logit Demand Analysis*

In this article, we use four data sets to provide a benchmark study of the effects of accounting for endogeneity and simultaneity in estimating marketing-mix effects in a logit demand framework. We compare the results obtained from accounting for endogeneity only to those from accounting for both endogeneity and simultaneity, and in the latter case we allow for more general models of firm behavior to examine the consequences of imposing assumptions about the behavior of firms. We find that accounting for both endogeneity and simultaneity not only affects the parameter estimates but also results in efficiency gains that affect the statistical significance of the estimates.

Modeling multichannel home video demand in the U.S. motion picture industry

The U.S. motion picture industry has become increasingly reliant on posttheatrical channel profits. Two often-cited drivers of these profits are cross-channel substitution among posttheatrical channels and seasonality in consumer preferences for any movie. The authors use a differentiated products version of the multiplicative competitive interaction model to investigate these two phenomena. They estimate the model using data from 2000 and 2001 on two posttheatrical channels in the U.S. market: purchase and rental home viewing channels. Contrary to expectations based on business press commentary, after controlling for seasonality and movie attributes, the authors find low cross-channel price and availability elasticity for both channels. To measure the extent of cross-channel cannibalization, they simulate a 28-day window of sequential release with either purchase or rental channel going first. They find that windowing reduces the sum of revenues across both channels, because more consumers choose to not purchase or rent when faced with older movies in their favored channel rather than to switch to the alternative channel with newer movies.

Putting Grades in Context

Concerns over grade inflation and disparities in grading practices have led institutions of higher education in the United States to adopt various grading reforms. An element common to several reforms is providing information on the distribution of grades in different courses. The main aims of such “grades in context” policies are to make grades more informative to transcript readers and to curb grade inflation. We provide a simple model to demonstrate that such policies can have complex effects on patterns of student course enrollment. These effects may lower the informativeness of some transcripts, increase the average grade, and lower welfare.

Is Dual Agency in Real Estate a Cause for Concern

We examine the effects of the regulation of dual agency in residential real estate transactions, for 10,888 transactions in Long Island, New York in 2004–2007. We find that dual agency has an overall null effect on sale price, but includes two opposing forces where buyer and seller interests might be compromised. The link between dual agency and timing of sales is less clear. These findings are robust to endogeneity bias. Although it appears dual agency does cause some market distortions, our analysis yields little evidence that prohibiting dual agency in real estate will increase welfare.

Inter-Industry Employment Spillovers from Tourism Inflows

How much economic stimulus does tourism provide by generating jobs in various local industry sectors? Using data across 43 U.S. metropolitan statistical areas during 1987–2006, we analyze the impact of tourism inflows — proxied by the number of hotel rooms sold — on the employment in 22 non-hotel industries. We estimate a dynamic labor demand model with inter-industry spillover effects, using various estimators including GMM-based dynamic panel methods. We find statistically and economically significant effects — an additional 100 rooms sold per day during a year in a given MSA generates between 2 and 5 new jobs per non-hotel industry in that area. Subsample analyses across industries indicate that construction, retail, health care, professional and technical services are among the largest beneficiaries of these spillovers.

The Impact of 9/11 on Road Fatalities: The Other Lives Lost to Terrorism

We find that driving fatalities increased significantly following the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, an event which prompted many travelers to substitute less-safe surface transportation for safer air transportation. After controlling for time trends, weather, road conditions, and other factors, we attribute an increase of 242 driving fatalities per month to additional road travel undertaken in response to 9/11. In total, our results suggest that at least 1,200 additional driving deaths are attributable to the effect of 9/11. We also provide evidence that is consistent with the 9/11 effect on road fatalities weakening over time as drivers return to flying. Our results show that the public response to terrorist threats can create unintended consequences that rival the attacks themselves in severity.