Transition to argument concerning explanatory model
The authors must demonstrate first that a significant gap exists. They accomplish this in the first three sentences.
Castiglione and Infante draw on Levy-Garboua and Montmarquette's (1996) work to argue that previous research on Italian theater attendance employed inappropriate explanatory models.
Our authors suggest both Bonato et al. (1990) and Zanardi (1998) employed static consumer models, which they insist "cannot be used to estimate demand for theatre because current attendance is strongly influenced by past attendance."
We can expect Castiglione and Infante to introduce a new model or set of models better able than the existing static models to account for these past-present effects.