Abstract

This paper reviews a framework for numerically analyzing dynamic interactions in imperfectly competitive industries. The framework dates back to Ericson & Pakes (1995), but it is based on equilibrium notions that had been available for some time be-fore, and it has been extended in many ways by different authors since. The framework requires as input a set of primitives which describe the institutional structure in the industry to be analyzed. The framework outputs profits and policies for every incum-bent and potential entrant at each possible state of the industry. These policies can be used to simulate the distribution of sample paths for all firms from any initial industry structure. The sample paths generated by the model can be quite different depending on the primitives that are fed into it, and most of the extensions were designed to enable the framework to accommodate empirically relevant cases that required modification of the initial structure. The sample paths possess similar properties to those observed in (the recently made available) panel data sets on industries. These sample paths can be used either for an analysis of the likely response to a policy or an environmental change,

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