Estimation of the mixed logit likelihood function by randomized quasi-Monte Carlo

D. Munger, L’Ecuyer, P., F. Bastin, C. Cirillo and B. Tuffin

Transportation Research Part B: Methodological, 2012, vol. 46, issue 2, 305-320

Abstract: We examine the effectiveness of randomized quasi-Monte Carlo (RQMC) techniques to estimate the integrals that express the discrete choice probabilities in a mixed logit model, for which no closed form formula is available. These models are used extensively in travel behavior research. We consider popular RQMC constructions such as randomized Sobol’, Faure, and Halton points, but our main emphasis is on randomly-shifted lattice rules, for which we study how to select the parameters as a function of the considered class of integrands. We compare the effectiveness of all these methods and of standard Monte Carlo (MC) to reduce both the variance and the bias when estimating the log-likelihood function at a given parameter value. In our numerical experiments, randomized lattice rules (with carefully selected parameters) and digital nets are the best performers and they reduce the bias as much as the variance. With panel data, in our examples, the performance of all RQMC methods degrades rapidly when we simultaneously increase the dimension and the number of observations per individual.

Keywords: Discrete choice; Mixed logit; Randomized quasi-Monte Carlo; MSE reduction; Lattice rules (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2012
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (8)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0191261511001457
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:transb:v:46:y:2012:i:2:p:305-320

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/supportfaq.cws_home/regional
https://shop.elsevie ... _01_ooc_1&version=01

DOI: 10.1016/j.trb.2011.10.005

Access Statistics for this article

Transportation Research Part B: Methodological is currently edited by Fred Mannering

More articles in Transportation Research Part B: Methodological from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().