The costs of free entry: an empirical study of real estate agents in Greater Boston

This article studies the consequences of fixed commissions and low entry barriers in Greater Boston's real estate brokerage industry from 1998-2007. We find that agent entry reduces average service quality and use a dynamic empirical model to study the inefficiency in the current market structure. To accommodate a large state space, we approximate the value function using sieves and impose the Bellman equation as an equilibrium constraint. Our results suggest that a 50% cut in commissions would result in 40% fewer agents, social savings that amount to 23% of industry revenue, and 73% more transactions for the average agent.