Estimating Discrete Games with Many Firms and Many Decisions: An Application to Merger and Product Variety
本摘要源自该文的 CEPR 工作论文版（2023），正式发表版可能有调整。
This paper presents an estimation method scalable to discrete games with many firms and many decisions. The method is applied to study merger effects on firm entry and product variety in the California retail craft beer market. Simulation results indicate that a merger, where a large brewery acquires several craft breweries, reduces product variety without efficiency gains, but increases variety with an efficiency in reducing fixed costs. Post-merger, firm entry occurs, but fails to counteract the merger’s negative effects on both consumers and total surplus. The fixed cost merger efficiency reduces, but does not reverse, the negative welfare effects.