Deflation in Durable Goods Markets: An Empirical Model of the Tokyo Condominium Market

Throughout the 1990s, the supply of new condominiums in Tokyo significantly increased while prices persistently fell. This paper investigates whether the market power of condominium developers is a factor in explaining the outcome in this market and whether there is a relationship between production cost trend and the degree of market power that the developers were able to exercise. In order to respond to these questions, a dynamic durable goods oligopoly model of the condominium market-one incorporating time-variant costs and a secondary market-is constructed and structurally estimated using a nested GMM procedure.