Gentzkow Presentation Slides

 Recently presented on Gentzkow (2007). Five key takeaways:


1. It is very useful to have a simple model to gain intuition for identification in the paper. 

2. There are clever ways to find identification in a model.  For example, without price variation Gentzkow introduces a supply side moment to estimate the coefficient.

3. Along similar lines it is interesting to see how to use parts of the data to empirically identify variables through exclusion restrictions and panel data.

4. It is important to model heterogeneity. Not taking into account unobserved factors causes us to estimate the goods as complements whereas we estimate them as substitutes when accounting for heterogeneity.

5. One can take a stance on optimal pricing. Gentzkow takes both sides.  He uses assumptions of optimality to recover price coefficients. At the same time he also models what the optimal price should be and makes interesting normative claims.


Anyway, my slides are here.

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