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on Discrete Choice Models |
| By: | Pierre Dupraz (SMART - Structures et Marché Agricoles, Ressources et Territoires - AGROCAMPUS OUEST - INRA - Institut National de la Recherche Agronomique); Abdoul Nasser Seyni Abdou (SMART - Structures et Marché Agricoles, Ressources et Territoires - AGROCAMPUS OUEST - INRA - Institut National de la Recherche Agronomique); Thomas Coisnon (SMART - Structures et Marché Agricoles, Ressources et Territoires - AGROCAMPUS OUEST - INRA - Institut National de la Recherche Agronomique); Bertille Thareau (LARESS - ESA - Ecole Superieure Agronomique) |
| Abstract: | In addition to their role in maintaining biodiversity, producing many ecosystem services or contributing to the landscape quality of the areas, hedgerows have the capacity to store carbon in their above-and below-ground biomass, an environmental function that can provide an opportunity for companies wishing to offset voluntarily their CO2 emissions. In this paper, we examine the conditions for the existence and development of voluntary carbon offset markets as a new way to improve hedge maintenance and mitigate climate change. Through a series of surveys conducted among companies and farmers in Western France, we aimto determine the existence of a space for negotiation between these actors by adopting a discrete choiceexperimentmethod. The results show acertain heterogeneity in the expression of willingness to pay and willingness to receive, but a space for negotiation is well identified for a category of actors and for some modalitiesof the scheme. From a methodological point of view, our work shows ina new way thatthe choice experiment method can be used to identify the conditions of existence of a market for environmental goods. |
| Keywords: | Willingness to pay,Willingness to receive,discrete choice experiment,conditional logit,mixed logit,voluntary carbon market,hedges |
| Date: | 2019–12–12 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hal:journl:hal-02503308&r=all |
| By: | Federica Di Marcantonio (European Commission - JRC); Luisa Menapace (Technical University of Munich – Tum); Jesus Barreiro-Hurle (European Commission - JRC); Pavel Ciaian (European Commission - JRC); François J. Dessart (European Commission - JRC); Liesbeth Colen (European Commission - JRC) |
| Abstract: | Differences in the composition of seemingly identical branded food products (DC-SIP) has been a source of growing concern in the EU in recent years. This was particularly the case after tests conducted in several Member States (MS) confirmed the presence of differences in composition of some branded food products sold across different Member States. To provide further evidence on DC-SIP practices, in close collaboration with experts from Member States' competent authorities and stakeholders of the food chain, the Joint Research Centre (JRC) developed a harmonised methodology for the comparative testing of DC-SIP in food across MS. The result of the application of this methodology to different products found that 9% and 22% of evaluated food products had differences in composition but had identical or similar front packaging, respectively. While the JRC’s comparative testing found evidence on the scale of the DC-SIP issue across EU, there is still a lack of empirical evidence on consumer preferences for DC-SIP. This report aims to contribute to the existing studies by verifying whether the presence of DC-SIP influences consumer preferences and willingness to pay for a different version of the same branded product. The study applied two different methodologies, an (online) discrete choice experiment (DCE) and a sensory testing experiment ('lab experiment'), in six MS (i.e. Germany, Hungary, Lithuania, Romania, Spain, and Sweden) with a total of 10,600 respondents. |
| Keywords: | dual food quality, food chain, branded food products, differences in composition, consumers |
| JEL: | D12 D91 L66 |
| Date: | 2020–05 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ipt:iptwpa:jrc119484&r=all |
| By: | Fu Ouyang (School of Economics, University of Queensland); Thomas Tao Yang (Australian National University) |
| Abstract: | We propose new identi cation and estimation approaches to semiparametric discrete choice models for bundles in both cross-sectional and panel data settings. The random utility functions of these models take the usual parametric form, while no distributional assumption is imposed on the stochastic disturbances. Our proposed methods permit certain forms of heteroskedasticity and arbitrary correlation in the disturbances across choices. Our identi cation approach is matching-based; it matches observed covariates across agents for the cross-sectional case, and over time for the panel data case. For the cross-sectional model, we propose a kernel-weighted rank procedure and establish N-asymptotic normality of the resulting estimators. We show the validity of the nonparametric bootstrap for the inference. For the panel data model, we propose localized maximum score type estimators which have a non-standard asymptotic distribution. We show that the numerical bootstrap developed by Hong and Li (2020) is a valid inference method for our panel data estimators. Monte Carlo experiments demonstrate that our proposed estimation and inference procedures perform adequately in nite samples. |
| Keywords: | Bundle choices; rank estimation; panel data; bootstrap. |
| JEL: | C13 C14 C35 |
| Date: | 2020–06–12 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:qld:uq2004:625&r=all |
| By: | Kalouptsidi, Myrto; Kitamura, Yuichi; Lima, Lucas; Souza-Rodrigues, Eduardo |
| Abstract: | We provide a general framework for investigating partial identification of structural dynamic discrete choice models and their counterfactuals, along with uniformly valid inference procedures. In doing so, we derive sharp bounds for the model parameters, counterfactual behavior, and low-dimensional outcomes of interest, such as the average welfare effects of hypothetical policy interventions. We char- acterize the properties of the sets analytically and show that when the target outcome of interest is a scalar, its identified set is an interval whose endpoints can be calculated by solving well-behaved constrained optimization problems via standard algorithms. We obtain a uniformly valid inference pro- cedure by an appropriate application of subsampling. To illustrate the performance and computational feasibility of the method, we consider both a Monte Carlo study of firm entry/exit, and an empirical model of export decisions applied to plant-level data from Colombian manufacturing industries. In these applications, we demonstrate how the identified sets shrink as we incorporate alternative model restrictions, providing intuition regarding the source and strength of identification. |
| Keywords: | counterfactual; dynamic discrete choice; Partial identification; Structural Model; Subsampling; Uni- form Inference |
| Date: | 2020–02 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:14402&r=all |
| By: | Levy, Matthew; Schiraldi, Pasquale |
| Abstract: | We study the identification of intertemporal preferences in a stationary dynamic discrete decision model. We propose a new approach which focuses on problems which are intrinsically dynamic: either there is endogenous variation in the choice set, or preferences depend directly on the history. History dependence links the choices of the decision-maker across periods in a more fundamental sense standard dynamic discrete choice models typically assume. We consider both exponential discounting as well as the quasi-hyperbolic discounting models of time preferences. We show that if the utility function or the choice set depends on the current states as well as the past choices and/or states, then time preferences are non-parametrically point-identified separately from the utility function under mild conditions on the data and we may also recover the instantaneous utility function without imposing any normalization on the utility across states. |
| Keywords: | dynamic discrete choice; identification; quasi-hyperbolic discounting; Time preferences |
| Date: | 2020–02 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:14447&r=all |
| By: | Andrew Ellis; David J Freeman |
| Abstract: | In a decision problem comprised of multiple intermediate choices, subjects may fail to take into account the interdependencies between their choices. We design and deploy a novel experiment to understand how people make decisions in such problems. We provide revealed preference tests of three models of choice bracketing: broad, narrow, and partial-narrow. We apply these tests in three experiments to determine how subjects bracket in portfolio allocation under risk, social allocation, and induced-utility shopping experiments. 40-44\% of our subjects are consistent with narrow bracketing, while only 0-15\% are consistent with broad bracketing. Classifying subjects while adjusting for models' predictive precision, 75\% of subjects are best described by narrow bracketing, 14\% by broad bracketing, and 3\% by intermediate cases. |
| Date: | 2020–06 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:arx:papers:2006.14869&r=all |
| By: | Jagelka, Tomáš (University of Bonn) |
| Abstract: | This paper proposes a method for empirically mapping psychological personality traits to economic preferences. Careful modelling of random components of decision making is crucial to establishing the long supposed but empirically elusive link between economic and psychological systems for understanding differences in individuals' behavior. I use factor analysis to extract information on individuals' cognitive ability and personality and embed it within a Random Preference Model to estimate distributions of risk and time preferences, of their individual-level stability, and of people's propensity to make mistakes. I explain up to 50% of the variation in both average risk and time preferences and in individuals' capacity to make consistent rational choices using four factors related to cognitive ability and three of the Big Five personality traits. True differences in desired outcomes are related to differences in personality whereas actual mistakes in decisions are related to cognitive skill. |
| Keywords: | economic preferences, personality traits, decision error, measurement error, stochastic discrete choice |
| JEL: | D91 D80 D01 |
| Date: | 2020–05 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp13303&r=all |
| By: | Miguel Costa-Gomes; Georgios Gerasimou |
| Abstract: | Inertia and context-dependent choice effects are well-studied classes of behavioural phenomena. While much is known about these effects individually, little is known about whether one of them "dominates" another. Knowledge of any such dominance is important for effective choice architecture and for accurate descriptive modelling. We initiate this empirical investigation with a lab experiment on choice under risk that was designed to test for dominance between *status quo bias* and the *decoy effect*. We find that the former unambiguously prevails over the latter and is powerful enough to make the average subject switch from being risk averse to being risk-seeking. The observed reversal in risk attitudes is explainable by a large class of Kozsegi-Rabin (2006) reference-dependent preferences. |
| Date: | 2020–06 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:arx:papers:2006.14868&r=all |