A Control Function Approach to Endogeneity in Consumer Choice Models

Endogeneity arises for numerous reasons in models of consumer choice. It leads to inconsistency with standard estimation methods that maintain independence between the model's error and the included variables. The authors describe a control function approach for handling endogeneity in choice models. Observed variables and economic theory are used to derive controls for the dependence between the endogenous variable and the demand error. The theory points to the relationships that contain information on the unobserved demand factor, such as the pricing equation and the advertising equation. The authors’ approach is an alternative to Berry, Levinsohn, and Pakes's (1995) product-market controls for unobserved…