TY  - JOUR
AU  - Conlon,Christopher T.
AU  - Mortimer,Julie Holland
TI  - Effects of Product Availability: Experimental Evidence
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 16506
PY  - 2010
Y2  - October 2010
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w16506
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w16506.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
Christopher Conlon
Department of Economics
Columbia University
420 W. 118th St.
New York City, NY 10027
E-Mail: cc3264@columbia.edu

Julie H. Mortimer
Department of Economics
Boston College
140 Commonwealth Avenue
Chestnut Hill, MA 02467
Tel: 617-552-3676
Fax: 617-552-2308
E-Mail: julie.mortimer.2@bc.edu
AB  - Product availability impacts many industries such as transportation, events, and retail, yet little empirical evidence documents the importance of stocking decisions for firm profits, vertical relationships, or consumers. We conduct several experiments, exogenously removing top-selling products from a set of vending machines and analyzing substitution patterns and profit impacts of the changed product availability using nonparametric analyses and structural demand estimation. We find substantial switching to alternate products, and evidence of misaligned incentives between upstream and downstream firms in the choice of which products to carry. We discuss the trade-offs of both empirical approaches for analyzing product availability effects generally.
ER  -