A Simple Framework to Analyze Data Requirements for Policy Evaluation

This note formalizes a framework to analyze whether for given data a theoretical economic model can lead to unambiguous predictions regarding economic outcomes of interest. Instead of structurally estimating demand and supply, we focus on whether the set of model paramaters consistent with observed data uniquely deter-mines the considered outcome. The framework can be applied to a large variety of economic models, and is of particular relevance for policy introductions when consumers potentially exhibit non-standard preferences. We discuss several applications to competition and consumer policy