Response Models , Data Sources and Dynamics

Albuquerque & Bronnenberg’s stated objective is to “study the behavior of consumers, dealers, and manufacturers in the car sector and present an approach that can be used by managers and policy makers to investigate the impact of significant demand shocks on industry profits, prices, and market structure.” That is an ambitious undertaking, as it aims to create relevance and credibility with distinct audiences, viz. academics, managers and government agencies. These audiences have different value systems, for example academics favor generalizability (broad applicability of the research methods and findings) and managers value context (capturing the richness of the specific problem at hand). Following the INFORMS mantra “the science of better”, I take the viewpoint that the ultimate raison d’etre of this research is the improvement of managerial and public policy decisions. Descriptive models of agent behavior (in this case consumers, manufacturers and dealers) play an important role in this enterprise, but they are not the end goal. As such my comments will focus on the opportunities for influencing management and public policy practice.