nep-dcm New Economics Papers
on Discrete Choice Models
Issue of 2019‒11‒25
eight papers chosen by
Edoardo Marcucci
Università degli studi Roma Tre

  1. Look at that! - The effect pictures have on consumer preferences for in ovo gender determination as an alternative to culling male chicks By Reithmayer, Corrinna; Danne, Michael; Mußhoff, Oliver
  2. Identification and inference in discrete choice models with imperfect information By Cristina Gualdani; Shruti Sinha
  3. Information structures in econometric models of network and matching By Gualdani, Cristina; Sinha, Shruti
  4. A Generalized Markov Chain Model to Capture Dynamic Preferences and Choice Overload By Kumar Goutam; Vineet Goyal; Agathe Soret
  5. Societal attitudes in ovo gender determination as an alternative to chick culling By Reithmayer, Corrinna; Danne, Michael; Mußhoff, Oliver
  6. Somewhere Between Utopia and Dystopia: Choosing From Multiple Incomparable Prospects By Gordon Anderson; Thierry Post; YOON-JAE WHANG
  7. Interaction indices for multichoice games By Mustapha Ridaoui; Michel Grabisch; Christophe Labreuche
  8. Is there bias in editorial choice? Yes By Moustafa, Khaled

  1. By: Reithmayer, Corrinna; Danne, Michael; Mußhoff, Oliver
    Abstract: Gender determination in incubated eggs (in ovo) has the potential to substitute the highly discussed practice of culling male layer chicks. The aim of this study is to investigate the effect pictures have on peoples' preferences towards in ovo sexing at different stages of embryonic development as an alternative to chick culling. For this purpose, an online survey was conducted with a representative sample of 482 respondents in Germany. A within-subject design with two choice experiments was used to investigate the influence pictures have on respondents' preferences and willingness to pay (WTP). The first choice experiment contained plain text only; the second contained also pictures of a chick or the incubated eggs at the corresponding stages of development. Findings reveal that in ovo gender determination at each proposed day of incubation (days 1, 4 and 9) was preferred to chick culling. In ovo screening on days 1 and 4 was significantly preferred to day 9. This preference for early gender determination increased significantly as a consequence to the provision of pictures. Results furthermore reveal that a high error rate of gender determination or the lack of a meaningful utilisation of incubated eggs can decrease approval for in ovo gender determination to an extent, where no positive WTP remains. Findings of this study are useful for stakeholders in poultry production when considering the implementation of in ovo gender determination as a morally admissible substitute to chick culling.
    Keywords: chick,choice experiment,egg,gender determination,in ovo,picture
    Date: 2019
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:daredp:1907&r=all
  2. By: Cristina Gualdani; Shruti Sinha
    Abstract: In this paper we study identification and inference of preference parameters in a single-agent, static, discrete choice model where the decision maker may face attentional limits precluding her to exhaustively process information about the payoffs of the available alternatives. By leveraging on the notion of one-player Bayesian Correlated Equilibrium in Bergemann and Morris (2016), we provide a tractable characterisation of the sharp identified set and discuss inference under minimal assumptions on the amount of information processed by the decision maker and under no assumptions on the rule with which the decision maker resolves ties. Simulations reveal that the obtained bounds on the preference parameters can be tight in several settings of empirical interest.
    Date: 2019–11
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:arx:papers:1911.04529&r=all
  3. By: Gualdani, Cristina; Sinha, Shruti
    Abstract: In this paper we study identification and inference of preference parameters in a single-agent, static, discrete choice model where the decision maker may face attentional limits precluding her to exhaustively process information about the payoffs of the available alternatives. By leveraging on the notion of one-player Bayesian Correlated Equilibrium in Bergemann and Morris (2016), we provide a tractable characterisation of the sharp identified set and discuss inference under minimal assumptions on the amount of information processed by the decision maker and under no assumptions on the rule with which the decision maker resolves ties. Simulations reveal that the obtained bounds on the preference parameters can be tight in several settings of empirical interest.
    Keywords: Discrete choice model, Bayesian Persuasion, Bayesian Correlated Equilibrium, Incomplete Information, Partial Identification, Moment Inequalities.
    Date: 2019–11
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:tse:wpaper:33017&r=all
  4. By: Kumar Goutam; Vineet Goyal; Agathe Soret
    Abstract: Assortment optimization is an important problem that arises in many practical applications such as retailing and online advertising where the goal is to find a subset of products from a universe of substitutable products that maximize a seller's expected revenue. The demand and the revenue depend on the substitution behavior of the customers that is captured by a choice model. One of the key challenges is to find the right model for the customer substitution behavior. Many parametric random utility based models have been considered in the literature to capture substitution. However, in all these models, the probability of purchase increases as we add more options to the assortment. This is not true in general and in many settings, the probability of purchase may decrease if we add more products to the assortment, referred to as the {\em choice overload}. In this paper we attempt to address these serious limitations and propose a generalization of the Markov chain based choice model considered in Blanchet et al. In particular, we handle dynamic preferences and the choice overload phenomenon using a {\em Markovian comparison} model that is a generalization of the Markovian substitution framework of Blanchet et al. The Markovian comparison framework allows us to implicitly model the search cost in the choice process and thereby, modeling both dynamic preferences as well as the choice overload phenomenon. We consider the assortment optimization problem for the special case of our generalized Markov chain model where the underlying Markov chain is rank-1 (this is a generalization of the Multinomial Logit model). We show that the assortment optimization problem under this model is NP-hard and present a fully polynomial-time approximation scheme (FPTAS) for this problem.
    Date: 2019–11
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:arx:papers:1911.06716&r=all
  5. By: Reithmayer, Corrinna; Danne, Michael; Mußhoff, Oliver
    Abstract: In ovo gender determination of incubated eggs can be a large-scale substitute to the culling of male chicks in layer hen production. However, the technology raises new ethical concerns which relate to the sensitivity of the embryo, as well as how the screened out eggs will be used afterwards and the accuracy of gender determination. In order to comprehensively investigate consumer attitudes towards this new technology, a questionnaire including a choice experiment was distributed to a representative sample of 482 German consumers between December 2018 and March 2019. The data was analyzed by an explorative factor analysis and a latent class analysis. Results indicate that the sample can be divided into four segments, which differ in preferences for production attributes, attitudes and price sensitivity. Attitudinal differences are found regarding respondents' approval of the technical advances in agricultural production, confidence in legal regulations and the endorsement of enhanced livestock production conditions. Both a meaningful usage of by-products and a high rate of accuracy are crucial factors for the acceptance of in ovo gender determination for the majority of respondents. However, response behavior of one segment, representing 11% of the sample, indicates the disapproval of both chick culling and in ovo screening.
    Keywords: chick,choice experiment,culling,gender determination,in ovo,latent class
    Date: 2019
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:daredp:1906&r=all
  6. By: Gordon Anderson; Thierry Post; YOON-JAE WHANG
    Abstract: In many fields of decision making, choices have to be made from multiple alternatives, but stochastic dominance rules do not yield a complete ordering due to incomparability of some or all of the prospects. For ranking incomparable prospects, a ¡®UtopiaIndex¡¯ measuring the proximity to a lower envelope of integrated distribution functions is proposed. Economic interpretations in terms of Expected Utility are provided for the envelope and deviations from it. The analysis generalizes the existing Almost Stochastic Dominance concept from pairwise comparison to a joint analysis of an arbitrary number of prospects. The limit distribution fortheempiricalcounterpart of the index for a general class of dynamic processes is derived together with a con- sistent and feasible inference procedure based on subsampling techniques. Empirical applications to Chinese household income data and historical investment returns data show that, in every choice set, a single prospect is ranked above all alternatives at conventional significance levels, despite the incomparability problem.
    Keywords: Almost Stochastic Dominance; Convex Stochastic Dominance; Subsampling; Wellbeing Analysis; Portfolio Choice
    Date: 2018–08
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:snu:ioerwp:no112&r=all
  7. By: Mustapha Ridaoui (CES - Centre d'économie de la Sorbonne - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique - UP1 - Université Panthéon-Sorbonne, PSE - Paris School of Economics); Michel Grabisch (CES - Centre d'économie de la Sorbonne - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique - UP1 - Université Panthéon-Sorbonne, UP1 - Université Panthéon-Sorbonne, PSE - Paris School of Economics); Christophe Labreuche (Thales Research and Technology [Palaiseau] - THALES)
    Abstract: Models in Multicriteria Decision Analysis (MCDA) can be analyzed by means of an importance index and an interaction index for every group of criteria. We consider first discrete models in MCDA, without further restriction, which amounts to considering multichoice games, that is, cooperative games with several levels of participation. We propose and axiomatize two interaction indices for multichoice games: the signed interaction index and the absolute interaction index. In a second part, we consider the continuous case, supposing that the continuous model is obtained from a discrete one y means of the Choquet integral. We show that, as in the case of classical games, the interaction index defined for continuous aggregation functions coincides with the (signed) interaction index, up to a normalizing coefficient.
    Abstract: Les modèles en décision multicritère (MCDA) peuvent être analysés au moyen d'un indice d'importance et d'un indice d'interaction pour un groupe de critères. On considère premièrement des modèles discrets sans restriction, ce qui revient à considérer des jeux multichoix, i.e., des jeux coopératifs avec plusieurs niveaux de participation. Nous proposons et axiomatisons deux indices d'interaction pour les jeux multichoix : l'indice d'interaction signé et l'indice d'interaction absolu. Dans une deuxième partie, nous considérons le cas continu, en supposant que le modèle continu est obtenu à partir du modèle discret par l'intégrale de Choquet. Nous montrons que, comme dans le cas classique, l'index d'interaction défini pour les fonctions d'agrégation continues coïncide avec l'indice d'interaction (signé), à un coefficient près.
    Keywords: multicriteria decision analysis,interaction,multichoice game,Choquet integral,décision multicritère,jeu multichoix,intégrale de Choquet
    Date: 2019–07
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hal:cesptp:halshs-02353519&r=all
  8. By: Moustafa, Khaled
    Abstract: Nature has recently published a Correspondence claiming the absence of fame biases in the editorial choice. The topic is interesting and deserves a deeper analysis than it was presented because the reported brief analysis and its conclusion are somewhat biased for many reasons, some of them are discussed here. Since the editorial assessment is a form of peer-review, the biases reported on external peer-reviews would, thus, apply to the editorial assessment, too. The biases would be proportional to the elitist level of a journal; the more elitist a journal, the more biased its decisions, unavoidably. The bias could be intentional or unintentional, conscious or subconscious, reflecting our imperfect human nature.
    Date: 2018–03–01
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:osf:arabix:vyt79&r=all

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