Demand Models With Random Partitions

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Smith, Adam N.; Allenby, Greg M.
• 署名单位: University of London; University College London; University System of Ohio; Ohio State University
• 刊物名称: JOURNAL OF THE AMERICAN STATISTICAL ASSOCIATION
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0162-1459
• DOI: 10.1080/01621459.2019.1604360
• 发表日期: 2020
• 页码: 47-65
• 关键词: VARIABLE SELECTION; purchase incidence; bayesian-analysis; regression; price; augmentation; elasticities; COMPETITION; covariance; shrinkage

摘要

Many economic models of consumer demand require researchers to partition sets of products or attributes prior to the analysis. These models are common in applied problems when the product space is large or spans multiple categories. While the partition is traditionally fixed a priori, we let the partition be a model parameter and propose a Bayesian method for inference. The challenge is that demand systems are commonly multivariate models that are not conditionally conjugate with respect to partition indices, precluding the use of Gibbs sampling. We solve this problem by constructing a new location-scale partition distribution that can generate random-walk Metropolis-Hastings proposals and also serve as a prior. Our method is illustrated in the context of a store-level category demand model, where we find that allowing for partition uncertainty is important for preserving model flexibility, improving demand forecasts, and learning about the structure of demand. for this article, including a standardized description of the materials available for reproducing the work, are available as an online supplement.