A dynamic hurdle model for zero-inflated count data: with an application to health care utilization

Gregori Baetschmann and Rainer Winkelmann

No 151, ECON - Working Papers from Department of Economics - University of Zurich

Abstract: Excess zeros are encountered in many empirical count data applications. We provide a new explanation of extra zeros, related to the underlying stochastic process that generates events. The process has two rates, a lower rate until the first event, and a higher one thereafter. We derive the corresponding distribution of the number of events during a fixed period and extend it to account for observed and unobserved heterogeneity. An application to the socio-economic determinants of the individual number of doctor visits in Germany illustrates the usefulness of the new approach.

Keywords: Excess zeros; Poisson process; exposure; hurdle model (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C25 I10 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2014-04
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ecm, nep-ger and nep-hea
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.zora.uzh.ch/id/eprint/95040/1/econwp151.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: A Dynamic Hurdle Model for Zero-Inflated Count Data: With an Application to Health Care Utilization (2014)
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:zur:econwp:151

Access Statistics for this paper

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