Dan Quint's Research Page     (list of papers)

 

 

Most of my research falls into two main strands.

 

 

“Taking the Wrong Empirical Model To Data”

 

The first strand of my research is largely about the question of what happens when you “take the wrong model to data” - when you analyze observational market data using an empirical model whose assumptions don't actually hold in the empirical setting.

 

Several papers in this strand are specifically about recovering underlying primitives (bidder valuations) from bid data in ascending (English) auctions:

 

·         Unobserved Correlation in Private-Value Ascending Auctions (2008 Econ Letters) shows that if you analyze transaction price data from English auctions under the assumption that bidders have independent private values when their valuations are in fact correlated, your counterfactuals will have a predictable bias: you will overestimate the seller-optimal reserve price, and the revenue or profit gain from setting a reserve above the seller’s true valuation.

·         Identification and Inference in Ascending Auctions with Correlated Private Values (with Andrés Aradillas-López and Amit Gandhi, 2013 Econometrica) aims to solve this problem, exploiting variation across auctions in the number of bidders to put nonparametric bounds on counterfactuals of interest (without estimating a full structural model) that are robust to standard forms of correlated values.

·         A Simple Test for Moment Inequality Models with an Application to English Auctions (with Andrés Aradillas-López and Amit Gandhi, 2016 J of Econometrics) establishes a testing procedure to test both the Independent Private Values assumption and the key identifying assumption (exogenous participation) of our first paper.

·         Common Values and Low Reserve Prices (2017 JINDEC) shows that if you interpret second-price or ascending auction bid data under the assumption of (correlated) private values when valuations in fact have a common component, your estimates of the optimal reserve price and the revenue gain from setting it will once again likely be biased upwards.

·         Estimation in English Auctions with Unobserved Heterogeneity (with Cristian Hernández and Christopher Turansick, 2020 RAND) proves point identification and shows how to operationalize a model of private values with additively separable unobserved heterogeneity; we show that failure to account for unobserved heterogeneity in a set of auctions from eBay Motors would lead to a 230% overestimate of average bidder surplus.

 

Three newer papers in this strand are about inferring market primitives (marginal costs) or firm conduct from prices and other observables in settings with differentiated products and multi-product firms:

 

·         Differentiated-Products Cournot Attributes Higher Markups Than Bertrand-Nash (with Lorenzo Magnolfi, Chris Sullivan and Sarah Waldfogel, 2022 Econ Letters) shows that from the same data and differentiated-products demand system, the Cournot model of competition in quantities attributes a greater share of prices to markups than does the Bertrand-Nash model of competition in prices, so if you estimate the Bertrand-Nash model on data that was generated by Cournot competition, your estimates of marginal cost will all be biased downwards.

·         Learning Firm Conduct: Pass-Through as a Foundation for Instrument Relevance (with Adam Dearing, Lorenzo Magnolfi, Christopher Sullivan, and Sarah Waldfogel, 2024 working paper) studies what determines falsifiability of an incorrect model of firm conduct using standard demand-side, supply-side, or tax-based instruments.  We apply the framework to the post-legalization marijuana market in Washington State, using instruments based on state and local tax rates, and find that the model that best fits retailer behavior is a rule-of-thumb of pricing at twice marginal cost.

·         Conduct and Scale Economies: Evaluating Tariffs in the US Automobile Market (with Marco Duarte, Lorenzo Magnolfi, Mikkel Sølvsten, and Christopher Sullivan, 2025 working paper) studies the additional challenge of falsifiability and conduct testing in the presence of economies of scale, and applies the framework to the US auto market, finding that the model of Cournot competition (competition in quantities) better fits the data than Bertrand price competition, which has significant implications for understanding the effect and incidence of tariffs.

 

 

Using Game Theory to Understand Real-World Institutions

 

The second main strand in my research uses game theory to model real-world institutions and practices, to better understand why trade occurs the way it does and how it could be improved.

 

·         Pooling With Essential And Nonessential Patents (2014 AEJ: Micro) examines patent pools – packaged licensing of related patents owned by different firms – and conditions under which it might have pro- or anti-competitive effects.

·         A Theory of Indicative Bidding (with Ken Hendricks, 2018 AEJ: Micro) examines indicative bidding – the use of preliminary, non-binding bids to narrow the set of potential buyers in corporate takeover settings.

·         Anglo-Dutch Premium Auctions in Eighteenth-Century Amsterdam (with Christiaan van Bochove and Lars Boerner, 2017 working paper) examines a two-round auction format used in eighteenth-century financial markets in Amsterdam.

·         Medieval Matching Markets (with Lars Boerner, 2023 IER) studies medieval regulations on brokerage, and finds that a key design feature (whether brokers were compensated based on volume or price) was largely set consistently with what would maximize surplus in each case.

·         “Bid Shopping” in Procurement Auctions with Subcontracting (with Ray Deneckere, accepted at REStud) examines the equilibrium effects of bid shopping, the practice of the winner of a procurement auction looking to renegotiate or replace their pre-auction subcontracting arrangements, and finds conditions under which its equilibrium welfare effects can be either positive or negative.

·         Platform Switching Policies under Collusion: Unintended Consequences for Digital Platforms (with John Higgins, Lorenzo Magnolfi, and Chris Sullivan, 2025 working paper) analyzes a model of two competing two-sided platforms (Uber and Lyft, or Airbnb and VRBO) to show that if the platforms are colluding rather than playing the static Nash equilibrium, a well-intentioned policy to reduce barriers to platform switching can have the exact opposite of the intended effect, potentially increasing the platforms’ profitability at the expense of both the buyers and sellers on the two platforms.

 

 

Other Miscellaneous Fun Theory Topics

 

Finally, a few of my papers don’t fit into either of these two categories.

 

·         Multilateral Bargaining with Concession Costs (with Guillermo Caruana and Liran Einav, 2007 JET) uses a dynamic model with gradually-increasing levels of commitment to resolve an equilibrium multiplicity problem present in a static bargaining game.

·         Efficient Entry (with Liran Einav, 2005 Econ Letters) uses a similar dynamic model to uniquely select the efficient equilibrium in an oligopoly entry game.

·         Looking Smart versus Playing Dumb in Common-Value Auctions (2010 ET) studies two-bidder common-value auctions, and finds that “expansive” information is more valuable when acquired overtly while “duplicative” information is more valuable when acquired covertly.

·         Imperfect Competition with Complements And Substitutes (2014 JET) studies competition when products are substitutes but contain complementary components made by different firms, and includes a result (sufficient conditions for log-concave, log-supermodular demand in a differentiated-products environment) which has proved useful in other settings.

·         Slope-Takers in Anonymous Markets (with Marek Weretka, 2023 AEJ: Micro) shows that the unique linear equilibrium in a Walrasian auction is selected by a simple learning heuristic, and traders can therefore converge to equilibrium play without needing to learn all the details of their environment.

·         Symmetric Equilibrium in Pre-Auction Investment (with Fuhito Kojima, 2024, r-and-r at AEJ: Micro) studies the incentives for investment prior to an auction, establishing existence and essential uniqueness of a symmetric equilibrium, and giving conditions for when it is in pure strategies and achieves efficient investment.