题目：Advertising, Brand Preferences, and Market Structure （广告，品牌偏好和市场结构）

演讲者：李伦（北京大学经济学院）

时间：2021年9月23日（周四下午）2:00-3:30

线下地点: 经院305教室

主持人：韩晗

简介：This paper explores how innovations in advertising technology reshape consumers’ brand preferences – the propensity to purchase certain brands over others despite sim- ilar prices – and lead to changes in the market structure. Using a comprehensive barcode-level dataset on grocery products, I document that the average concentration and markup for the selected categories have decreased by 10% and 5% respectively, between 2010 and 2016. Using an occurrence-level advertisement expenditure and im- pression dataset, I find that the cost elasticity of advertising steadily increases during the sample period, suggesting greater economies of scale for the entire advertising in- dustry. Finally, I construct a multi-product, multi-sector heterogeneous firm model with endogenous advertising and entry/exit decisions, and structurally estimate model parameters. The counterfactual analysis shows that if the advertising cost function had not changed, the average markup and market concentration would have both increased between 2010 and 2016.

演讲者介绍：李伦现为北京大学经济学院助理教授，2021年毕业于芝加哥大学，获经济学博士学位。他的主要研究兴趣为宏观经济学、产业经济学。