{"title":"Counterfactual Evaluation in Semiparametric Multinomial Choice Models","authors":"K. Chiong, Yu-Wei Hsieh, M. Shum","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.3006737","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3006737","url":null,"abstract":"We propose using cyclic monotonicity, a convex-analytic property of the random utility choice model, to derive bounds on counterfactual choice probabilities in semiparametric multinomial choice models. These bounds are useful for typical counterfactual exercises in aggregate discrete-choice demand models. In our semiparametric approach, we do not specify the parametric distribution for the utility shocks, thus accommodating a wide variety of substitution patterns among alternatives. Computation of the counterfactual bounds is a tractable linear programming problem. We illustrate our approach in a series of Monte Carlo simulations and an empirical application using scanner data.","PeriodicalId":264857,"journal":{"name":"ERN: Semiparametric & Nonparametric Methods (Topic)","volume":"6 3 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2017-05-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"126054881","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Pension Eligibility Rules and the Local Causal Effect of Retirement on Cognitive Functioning","authors":"Eduardo Fé","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.2993152","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2993152","url":null,"abstract":"We present a nonparametric bounds analysis of the local average treatment effect (LATE) of retirement on cognitive functioning. Partial identification methods are used to obtain identification regions for LATE and empirically assess the extent to which the critical exclusion restriction is satisfied. We find that retirement can lead to, at most, a drop of around 0.8 correct answer in a 20-question memory task. Importantly, we find strong evidence against the universal validity of pension eligibility criteria as sources of valid instrumental variables for retirement.","PeriodicalId":264857,"journal":{"name":"ERN: Semiparametric & Nonparametric Methods (Topic)","volume":"71 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2017-05-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"123814881","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Efficient Estimation of Integrated Volatility Functionals via Multiscale Jackknife","authors":"Jia Li, Yunxiao Liu, D. Xiu","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.2942235","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2942235","url":null,"abstract":"We propose semi-parametrically efficient estimators for general integrated volatility functionals of multivariate semimartingale processes. It is known that a plug-in method that uses nonparametric estimates of spot volatilities induces high-order biases which need to be corrected to obey a central limit theorem. Such bias terms arise from boundary effects, the diffusive and jump movements of stochastic volatility, and the sampling error from the nonparametric spot volatility estimation. We propose a novel jackknife method for bias-correction. The jackknife estimator is simply formed as a linear combination of a few uncorrected estimators associated with different local window sizes used in the estimation of spot volatility. We show theoretically that our estimator is asymptotically mixed Gaussian, semi-parametrically efficient, and more robust to the choice of local windows. To facilitate the practical use, we introduce a simulation-based estimator of the asymptotic variance, so that our inference is derivative-free and, hence, is very convenient to implement.","PeriodicalId":264857,"journal":{"name":"ERN: Semiparametric & Nonparametric Methods (Topic)","volume":"119 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2017-03-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"122480871","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Penalized Quantile Regression with Semiparametric Correlated Effects: Applications with Heterogeneous Preferences","authors":"M. Harding, Carlos Lamarche","doi":"10.1002/JAE.2520","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1002/JAE.2520","url":null,"abstract":"This paper proposes new ?1-penalized quantile regression estimators for panel data, which explicitly allows for individual heterogeneity associated with covariates. We conduct Monte Carlo simulations to assess the small sample performance of the new estimators and provide comparisons of new and existing penalized estimators in terms of quadratic loss. We apply the techniques to two empirical studies. First, the new method is applied to the estimation of labor supply elasticities and we find evidence that positive substitution effects dominate negative wealth effects at the middle of the conditional distribution of hours. The overall effect tends to be larger at the lower tail, which suggests that changes in taxes have different effects across the response distribution. Second, we estimate consumer preferences for nutrients from a demand model using a large scanner dataset of household food purchases. We show that preferences for nutrients vary across the conditional distribution of expenditure and across genders, and emphasize the importance of fully capturing consumer heterogeneity in demand modeling. Both applications highlight the importance of estimating individual heterogeneity when designing economic policy.","PeriodicalId":264857,"journal":{"name":"ERN: Semiparametric & Nonparametric Methods (Topic)","volume":"90 8 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2017-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"132483435","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Comparison of Parametric and Semiparametric Representations of Unobserved Preference Heterogeneity in Logit Models","authors":"P. Bansal, Ricardo A. Daziano, Martin Achtnicht","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.2902402","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2902402","url":null,"abstract":"The logit-mixed logit (LML) model is a very recent advancement in semiparametric discrete choice models. LML represents the mixing distribution of a logit kernel as a sieve function (polynomials, step functions, and splines, among many other variants). In the first part of this paper, we conduct Monte-Carlo studies to analyze the number of required parameters (e.g., polynomial order) in three LML variants to recover the true population distributions, and also compare the performance (in terms of accuracy, precision, estimation time, and model fit) of LML and a mixed multinomial logit with normal heterogeneity (MMNL-N). Our results indicate that adding too many parameters in LML may not be the best strategy to retrieve underlying taste heterogeneity; in fact, overspecified models generally perform worst in terms of BIC. We recommend to use neither minimum-BIC nor the most flexible specification, but we rather suggest to start with the same number of parameters as a parametric model (such as MMNL-N) while checking changes in the derived histogram of the mixing distribution. As expected, LML was able to recover bimodal-normal, lognormal, and uniform distributions much better than the misspecified MMNL-N. Computational efficiency makes LML advantageous in the process of searching for the final specification. In the second part of the paper, we estimate the willingness-to-pay (WTP) estimates of German consumers for different vehicle attributes when making alternative-fuel-car purchase choices. LML was able to capture the bimodal nature of WTP for vehicle attributes, which was not possible to retrieve using standard parametric specifications.","PeriodicalId":264857,"journal":{"name":"ERN: Semiparametric & Nonparametric Methods (Topic)","volume":"46 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2016-12-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"115108441","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"An Infinite Hidden Markov Model for Short-term Interest Rates","authors":"J. Maheu, Qiao Yang","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.3521099","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3521099","url":null,"abstract":"The time-series dynamics of short-term interest rates are important as they are a key input into pricing models of the term structure of interest rates. In this paper we extend popular discrete time short-rate models to include Markov switching of infinite dimension. This is a Bayesian nonparametric model that allows for changes in the unknown conditional distribution over time. Applied to weekly U.S. data we find significant parameter change over time and strong evidence of non-Gaussian conditional distributions. Our new model with a hierarchical prior provides significant improvements in density forecasts as well as point forecasts. We find evidence of recurring regimes as well as structural breaks in the empirical application.","PeriodicalId":264857,"journal":{"name":"ERN: Semiparametric & Nonparametric Methods (Topic)","volume":"127 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2016-05-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"114458728","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Measuring Productivity When Technologies are Heterogeneous: A Semi-Parametric Approach for Electricity Generation","authors":"S. Seifert","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.2698067","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2698067","url":null,"abstract":"While productivity growth in electricity generation is associated with multiple positive effects from an economic and environmental perspective, measuring it is challenging. This paper proposes a framework to estimate and decompose productivity growth for a sector characterized by multiple technologies. Using a metafrontier Malmquist decomposition and frontier estimation based on stochastic non-smooth envelopment of data (StoNED) allows for productivity estimation with few microeconomic assumptions. Additionally, evaluation of productivity at representative hypothetical units permits distribution-free analysis for the whole distribution of power plant sizes. The proposed framework is used to analyze a unique and rich dataset of coal, lignite, gas, and biomass-fired generators operating in Germany from 2003 to 2010. The results indicate stagnating productivity for the sector as a whole, technical progress for biomass plants, and very high productivity for gas-fired plants.","PeriodicalId":264857,"journal":{"name":"ERN: Semiparametric & Nonparametric Methods (Topic)","volume":"14 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2015-11-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"129885040","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Regression Discontinuity Designs with Nonclassical Measurement Errors","authors":"Takahide Yanagi","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.3080198","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3080198","url":null,"abstract":"This paper develops a nonparametric identification analysis in regression discontinuity (RD) designs where each observable may contain measurement error. Our analysis allows the measurement error to be nonclassical in the sense that it can be arbitrarily dependent of the unobservables as long as the joint distribution satisfies a few smoothness conditions. We provide formal identification conditions under which the standard RD estimand based on the observables identifies a local weighted average treatment effect parameter. We also show that our identifying conditions imply a testable implication of the continuous density of the observable assignment variable.","PeriodicalId":264857,"journal":{"name":"ERN: Semiparametric & Nonparametric Methods (Topic)","volume":"51 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2015-10-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"133922544","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Semiparametric Dynamic Portfolio Choice with Multiple Conditioning Variables","authors":"Jia Chen, Degui Li, O. Linton, Zudi Lu","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.2563317","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2563317","url":null,"abstract":"Dynamic portfolio choice has been a central and essential objective for investors in active asset management. In this paper, we study the dynamic portfolio choice with multiple conditioning variables, where the dimension of the conditioning variables can be either fixed or diverging to infinity at certain polynomial rate of the sample size. We propose a novel data-driven method to estimate the optimal portfolio choice, motivated by the model averaging marginal regression approach suggested by Li et al. (2015). More specifically, in order to avoid the curse of dimensionality associated with the multivariate nonparametric regression problem and to make it practically implementable, we first estimate the marginal optimal portfolio choice by maximizing the conditional utility function for each univariate conditioning variable, and then construct the joint dynamic optimal portfolio through the weighted average of the marginal optimal portfolio across all the conditioning variables. Under some regularity conditions, we establish the large sample properties for the developed portfolio choice procedure. Both the simulation study and empirical application well demonstrate the finite-sample performance of the proposed methodology.","PeriodicalId":264857,"journal":{"name":"ERN: Semiparametric & Nonparametric Methods (Topic)","volume":"24 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2015-02-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"133195183","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Leonardo Fabio Morales, P. Gordon-Larsen, David K. Guilkey
{"title":"Obesity and Health-Related Decisions: An Empirical Model of The Determinants of Weight Status","authors":"Leonardo Fabio Morales, P. Gordon-Larsen, David K. Guilkey","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.2532479","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2532479","url":null,"abstract":"Using Add Health, a very comprehensive longitudinal data set of teenagers and young adults in the United States, we estimate a structural dynamic model of the determinants of obesity. In addition to including many of the well-recognized endogenous factors mentioned in the literature as obesity determinants, i.e., physical activity, smoking, a proxy for food consumption, and childbearing, we also model the residential location as a choice variable, relevant to the young-to middle-aged adult, as a major component. This allows us to control for an individual’s self-selection into communities which possess the types of amenities in the built environment which in turn affect their behaviors such as physical activity and fast food consumption. We specify reduced form equations for all these endogenous demand decisions, together with an obesity structural equation. The whole system of equations is jointly estimated by a semi-parametric full information log-likelihood method that allows for a general pattern of correlation in the errors across equations. Simulations are then used to allow us to quantify the effects of these endogenous factors on the probability of obesity. A key finding is that controlling for residential self-selection has important substantive implications. To our knowledge, this has not been yet documented within a full information maximum likelihood framework.","PeriodicalId":264857,"journal":{"name":"ERN: Semiparametric & Nonparametric Methods (Topic)","volume":"65 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2014-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"132327389","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}