Thursday 24th November 2022, 10:30–12:00 (Australia/Melbourne), Zoom Breakout Room 2
Choice modelling is a specialised area of micro-econometrics. Choice modellers use the microdata of individual choices. The choices could span a wide range of phenomena: examples include the decision to get married, to enter the workforce, and to buy private health insurance. Choice modelling has found great application in several areas of applied economics, including environmental, health, and transport economics. Interest in choice models is also reflected in the academic literatures in business and psychology. This short workshop presents an overview of the family of choice models that are used by choice modellers. The foundational model is Daniel McFadden's conditional logistic regression. McFadden is a professor emeritus at UC Berkeley and Nobel Laureate. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences in 2000 for developing the conditional logit model and for his contributions to microeconomic theory. Since the development of McFadden's model, there has been much interest in extensions and generalisations of the model. McFadden's model retrieves the aggregate preferences of samples (populations) of decision makers. Extensions of his model retrieve the aggregate preferences and the unobserved sources of variation in the preferences of decision makers. Academic interest in choice modelling is partly motivated by the useful outputs that choice models generate, including forecasts of demand, price elasticities of demand, and marginal willingness to pay estimates (for changes in the levels of the explanatory variables studied). These outputs can help policymakers to understand the economic value of (for example, health and environmental) goods to consumer-decision makers. This workshop brings these concepts to life with reference to a now classic study from environmental economics focused on competing use values of forestry resources in Canada. The goal of the workshop is to provide an introduction to choice modelling and to highlight its value to researchers and policymakers in the social and behavioural sciences.
I have an academic appointment at one of Australia’s top business schools. My teaching is focused on the emerging field of business analytics and I am passionate about improving the data and statistical literacy of the next generation of business school graduates. My research interests include quantitative marketing and economics. Together with my academic collaborators, I developed a very general and flexible econometric model for studying decision-making and choice.