the producers and consumers. Variables that are unobservable to the econometrician, such as internal production costs and certain aspects of the consumer’s preferences, are known as [*shocks*]{} and are modeled as independent random variables. The draws of these random variables are known to the market’s participants, but only their distributions are known to the econometrician. Second, an equilibrium pricing model is assumed for the producers. The consumers are typically assumed to be utility maximizers having no strategic interactions with in the market. Finally, an estimation technique is optimistically employed to determine a set of parameter values that are consistent with the observed behavior. Ultimately, it is from these parameter values that one derives insight into the unobservable characteristics of the market. Unfortunately, neither efficient sample nor computational complexity bounds are generally available using this family of approaches.

A variety of questions have been investigated by econometricians using this line of reasoning. Petrin investigated the competitive advantage of being the first producer in a market by considering the introduction of the minivan to the North American automotive industry [@petrin2002]. Nevo provided evidence against price-fixing in the breakfast cereal market by measuring the effects of advertising [@nevo01]. Others have examined the mid-scale 