Preemptive Entry and Technology Diffusion: The Market for Drive-in Theaters / Ricard Gil, Jean-François Houde, Shilong Sun, Yuya Takahashi.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Gil, Ricard.

Contributor:

National Bureau of Economic Research.

Houde, Jean-François.

Sun, Shilong.

Takahashi, Yuya.

Series:

Working Paper Series (National Bureau of Economic Research) no. w29408.

NBER working paper series no. w29408

Language:

English

Physical Description:

1 online resource: illustrations (black and white);

Place of Publication:

Cambridge, Mass. National Bureau of Economic Research 2021.

Summary:

This paper studies the role and incidence of entry preemption strategic motives on the dynamics of new industries, while providing an empirical test for entry preemption, and quantifying its impact on market structure. The empirical context is the evolution of the U.S. drive-in theater market between 1945 and 1957. We exploit a robust prediction of dynamic entry games to test for preemption incentives: the deterrence effect of entering early is only relevant for firms in markets of intermediate size. Potential entrants in small and large markets face little uncertainty about the actual number of firms that will eventually enter. This leads to a non-monotonic relationship between market size and the probability of observing an early entrant. We find robust empirical support for this prediction using a large cross-section of markets. We then estimate the parameters of a dynamic entry game that matches the reduced-form prediction and quantify the strength of the preemption incentive. Our counterfactual analysis shows that strategic motives can increase the number of early entrants by as much as 50 percent in mid-size markets without affecting the number of firms in the long run. By causing firms to enter the market too early, we show that strategic entry preemption leads on average to a 5% increase in entry costs and a 1% decrease in firms' expected value (relative to an environment without strategic investments).

Notes:

Print version record

October 2021.