Download or read book A Research Assistant s Guide to Random Coefficients Discrete Choice Models of Demand written by Aviv Nevo and published by . This book was released on 1998 with total page 56 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The study of differentiated-products markets is a central part of empirical industrial organization. Questions regarding market power, mergers, innovation, and valuation of new brands are addressed using cutting-edge econometric methods and relying on economic theory. Unfortunately, difficulty of use and computational costs have limited the scope of application of recent developments in one of the main methods for estimating demand for differentiated products: random coefficients discrete choice models. As our understanding of these models of demand has increased, both the difficulty and costs have been greatly reduced. This paper carefully discusses the latest innovations in these methods with the hope of (1) increasing the understanding, and therefore the trust, among researchers who never used these methods, and (2) reducing the difficulty of use, and therefore aiding in realizing the full potential of these methods.
Download or read book An Optimization based Econometric Framework for the Evaluation of Monetary Policy written by Julio Rotemberg and published by . This book was released on 1998 with total page 84 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This paper considers a simple quantitative model of output, interest rate and inflation determination in the United States, and uses it to evaluate alternative rules by which the Fed may set interest rates. The model is derived from optimizing behavior under rational expectations, both on the part of the purchasers of goods and upon that of the sellers. The model matches the estimates responses to a monetary policy shock quite well and, once due account is taken of other disturbances, can account for our data nearly as well as an unrestricted VAR. The monetary policy rule that most reduces inflation variability (and is best on this account) requires very variable interest rates, which in turn is possible only in the case of a high average inflation rate. But even in the case of a constrained-optimal policy, that takes into account some of the costs of average inflation and constrains the variability of interest rates so as to keep average inflation low, inflation would be stabilized considerably more and output stabilized considerably less than under our estimates of current policy. Moreover, this constrained-optimal policy also allows average inflation to be much smaller. This version contains additional details of our derivations and calculations, including three technical appendices, not included in the version published in NBER Macroeconomics Annual 1997.
Download or read book NBER Reporter written by National Bureau of Economic Research and published by . This book was released on 1997 with total page 526 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Contents of Recent Economics Journals written by and published by . This book was released on 1998-06-19 with total page 366 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Maximum Likelihood Estimation of Discretely Sampled Diffusions written by Yacine Aït-Sahalia and published by . This book was released on 1998 with total page 64 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When a continuous-time diffusion is observed only at discrete dates, not necessarily close together, the likelihood function of the observations is in most cases not explicitly computable. Researchers have relied on simulations of sample paths in between the observations points, or numerical solutions of partial differential equations, to obtain estimates of the function to be maximized. By contrast, we construct a sequence of fully explicit functions which we show converge under very general conditions, including non-ergodicity, to the true (but unknown) likelihood function of the discretely-sampled diffusion. We document that the rate of convergence of the sequence is extremely fast for a number of examples relevant in finance. We then show that maximizing the sequence instead of the true function results in an estimator which converges to the true maximum-likelihood estimator and shares its asymptotic properties of consistency, asymptotic normality and efficiency. Applications to the valuation of derivative securities are also discussed.
Download or read book Predictive Regressions written by Robert F. Stambaugh and published by . This book was released on 1999 with total page 64 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When a rate of return is regressed on a lagged stochastic regressor, such as a dividend yield, the regression disturbance is correlated with the regressor's innovation. The OLS estimator's finite-sample properties, derived here, can depart substantially from the standard regression setting. Bayesian posterior distributions for the regression parameters are obtained under specifications that differ with respect to (i) prior beliefs about the autocorrelation of the regressor and (ii) whether the initial observation of the regressor is specified as fixed or stochastic. The posteriors differ across such specifications asset allocations in the presence of estimation risk exhibit sensitivity to those differences.
Download or read book Encompassing Tests when No Model is Encompassing written by Kenneth David West and published by . This book was released on 2000 with total page 44 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This paper considers regression-based tests for encompassing, when none of the models under consideration encompasses all the other models. For both in- and out-of-sample applications, I derive asymptotic distributions and propose feasible procedures to construct confidence intervals and test statistics. Procedures that are asymptotically valid under the null of encompassing (e.g., Davidson and MacKinnon (1981)) can have large asymptotic and finite sample distortions. Simulations indicate that the proposed procedures can work well in samples of size typically available, though the divergence between actual and nominal confidence interval coverage sometimes is large.
Download or read book Reprint Series written by and published by . This book was released on 1997 with total page 560 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Bias of the RSR Estimator and the Accuracy of Some Alternatives written by William N. Goetzmann and published by . This book was released on 2001 with total page 54 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This paper analyzes the implications of cross-sectional heteroskedasticity in repeat sales regression (RSR). RSR estimators are essentially geometric averages of individual asset returns because of the logarithmic transformation of price relatives. We show that the cross sectional variance of asset returns affects the magnitude of bias in the average return estimate for that period, while reducing the bias for the surrounding periods. It is not easy to use an approximation method to correct the bias problem. We suggest a maximum-likelihood alternative to the RSR that directly estimates index returns that are analogous to the RSR estimators but are arithmetic averages of individual returns. Simulations show that these estimators are robust to time-varying cross-sectional variance and may be more accurate than RSR and some alternative methods of RSR.
Download or read book Solving Dynamic Equilibrium Models by a Method of Undetermined Coefficients written by Lawrence J. Christiano and published by . This book was released on 1998 with total page 54 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: I present an undetermined coefficients method for obtaining a linear approximating to the solution of a dynamic, rational expectations model. I also show how that solution can be used to compute the model's implications for impulse response functions and for second moments.
Download or read book Interactions based Models written by William A. Brock and published by . This book was released on 2000 with total page 146 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This paper describes a range of methods which have been proposed to study interactions in economic and social contexts. By interactions, we refer to interdependences between individual decisions which are not mediated by markets. These types of models have been employed to understand phenomena ranging from the effect of neighborhoods on the life prospects of children to the evolution of political party platforms. We provide a general choice-based framework for modeling such interactions which subsumes a number of specific models which have been studied. This framework illustrates the relationship between interactions-based models and models in statistical mechanics. Our analysis is then extended to the econometrics of these models, with an emphasis on the identification of group-level influences on individual behavior. Finally, we review some of the empirical work on interactions which has appeared in the social science literature.
Download or read book Estimating Log Models written by Willard G. Manning and published by . This book was released on 1999 with total page 60 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Sorting Out Sorts written by Jonathan B. Berk and published by . This book was released on 1998 with total page 38 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this paper we analyze the theoretical implications of sorting data into groups and then running asset pricing tests within each group. We show that the way this procedure is implemented introduces a severe bias in favor of rejecting the model under consideration. By simply picking enough groups to sort into even the true asset pricing model can be shown to have no explanatory power within each group.
Download or read book Estimating Euler Equations written by Orazio P. Attanasio and published by . This book was released on 2000 with total page 48 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this paper we consider conditions under which the estimation of a log-linearized Euler equation for consumption yields consistent estimates of the preference parameters. When utility is isoelastic and a sample covering a long time period is available, consistent estimates are obtained from the log-linearized Euler equation when the innovations to the conditional variance of consumption growth are uncorrelated with the instruments typically used in estimation. We perform a Montecarlo experiment, consisting in solving and simulating a simple life cycle model under uncertainty, and show that in most situations, the estimates obtained from the log-linearized equation are not systematically biased. This is true even when we introduce heteroscedasticity in the process generating income. The only exception is when discount rates are very high (47% per year). This problem arises because consumers are nearly always close to the maximum borrowing limit: the estimation bias is unrelated to the linearization. Finally, we plot life cycle profiles for the variance of consumption growth, which, except when the discount factor is very high, is remarkably flat. This implies that claims that demographic variables in log-linearized Euler equations capture changes in the variance of consumption growth are unwarranted.
Download or read book Consumer Choice of Food Products and the Implications for Price Competition and Government Policy written by Eliza M. Mojduszka and published by . This book was released on 1988* with total page 32 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book A Simple Framework for Nonparametric Specification Testing written by Glenn Ellison and published by . This book was released on 1998 with total page 56 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This paper presents a simple framework for testing the specification of parametric conditional means. The test statistics are based on quadratic forms in the residuals of the null model. Under general assumptions the test statistics are asymptotically normal under the null. With an appropriate choice of the weight matrix, the tests are shown to be consistent and to have good local power. Specific implementations involving matrices of bin and kernel weights are discussed. Finite sample properties are explored in simulations and an application to some parametric models of gasoline demand is presented.
Download or read book Local Instrumental Variables written by James Joseph Heckman and published by . This book was released on 2000 with total page 90 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This paper unites the treatment effect literature and the latent variable literature. The economic questions answered by the commonly used treatment effect parameters are considered. We demonstrate how the marginal treatment effect parameter can be used in a latent variable framework to generate the average treatment effect, the effect of treatment on the treated and the local average treatment effect, thereby establishing a new relationship among these parameters. The method of local instrumental variables directly estimates the marginal treatment effect parameters, and thus can be used to estimate all of the conventional treatment effect parameters when the index condition holds and the parameters are identified. When they are not, the method of local instrumental variables can be used to produce bounds on the parameters with the width of the bounds depending on the width of the support for the index generating the choice of the observed potential outcome.
