Empirical Entry Games with Complementarities: An Application to the Shopping Center Industry

Vol. XLIX (April 2012), 175 –191 *Maria Ana Vitorino is an Assistant Professor, The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania (e-mail: [email protected]). This article is based on the author’s doctoral dissertation at the University of Chicago. The author is indebted to dissertation advisors Jean-Pierre Dubé, Pradeep Chintagunta, Kenneth Judd, Peter Rossi, and Matthew Gentzkow for their guidance and support. She has greatly benefited from discussions with Frederico Belo, Hongju Liu, Jonah Berger, Alon Eizenberg, Jeremy Fox, Yeşim Orhun, Katja Seim, Upender Subramanian, and Ting Zhu. For their helpful comments, the author thanks Peter Reiss; Günter Hitsch; Oleg Urminsky; seminar participants at the University of Chicago, Emory University, CMU, University of Rochester, University of California, Berkeley, University of California, Los Angeles, New York University, University of Pennsylvania, University of North Carolina–Chapel Hill, University of Iowa, University of Toronto, HKUST, University of Texas at Dallas, and QME 2007 Conference; and the anonymous JMR reviewers. The author also thanks Che-Lin Su, Todd Plantenga, David Gay, and Robert Fourer for providing help with AMPL and KNITRO and Hector Castro for excellent research assistance. Julie Cameron and Robert Michaels from General Growth Properties and Mike Tubridy from the ICSC shared their insights on the shopping center industry, and Bob Galvin from the NRB made available part of the shopping center data. The author gratefully acknowledges the financial support from the Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology), the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, and the Kilts Center for Marketing at the University of Chicago. Yuxin Chen served as associate editor for this article. MARIA ANA VITORINO*