Consistent estimation of zero-inflated count models

Kevin Staub and Rainer Winkelmann

No 908, SOI - Working Papers from Socioeconomic Institute - University of Zurich

Abstract: Applications of zero-inflated count data models have proliferated in health economics. However, zero-inflated Poisson or zero-inflated negative binomial maximum likelihood estimators are not robust to misspecification. This paper proposes Poisson quasi-likelihood estimators as an alternative. These estimators are consistent in the presence of excess zeros without having to specify the full distribution. The advantages of the Poisson quasi-likelihood approach are illustrated in a series of Monte Carlo simulations and in an application to the demand for health services.

Keywords: Excess zeros; Poisson; logit; unobserved heterogeneity; misspecification (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C12 C25 I12 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 21 pages
Date: 2009-06, Revised 2011-08
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ecm
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (10)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.zora.uzh.ch/id/eprint/51508/1/wp0908.pdf revised version, 2011 (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: CONSISTENT ESTIMATION OF ZERO‐INFLATED COUNT MODELS (2013)
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:soz:wpaper:0908

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in SOI - Working Papers from Socioeconomic Institute - University of Zurich Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Severin Oswald ().