A guide to heterogeneity features captured by parametric and nonparametric mixing distributions for the mixed logit model

Yuan Yuan, Wen You and Kevin Boyle

No 205733, 2015 AAEA & WAEA Joint Annual Meeting, July 26-28, San Francisco, California from Agricultural and Applied Economics Association

Abstract: Unobserved heterogeneity is popularly modelled using the mixed logit model, so called because it is a mixture of standard conditional logit models. Although the mixed logit model can, in theory, approximate any random utility model with an appropriate mixing distribution, there is little guidance on how to select such a distribution. This study contributes to suggestions on distribution selection by describing the heterogeneity features which can be captured by established parametric mixing distributions and more recently introduced nonparametric mixing distributions, both of a discrete and continuous nature. We provide empirical illustrations of each feature in turn using simple mixing distributions which focus on the feature at hand.

Keywords: Health Economics and Policy; Research Methods/ Statistical Methods (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 31
Date: 2015-07
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-dcm and nep-ecm
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (7)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ags:aaea15:205733

DOI: 10.22004/ag.econ.205733

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