Econometrics 715 Problem Set 1, Fall 2015
The file ps1.dat is a text file with 1000 rows and 4 columns. Each row is an independent observation. The four variables are (yi; x1i; x2i; x3i). We will be estimating the parameters of the following equation
yi = θ1x1i + θ2x2i + θ3exp (θ4x3i) + θ5 + ei
Each estimator takes the form
θ^ = argmin Sn(θ)
where
Sn(θ) = 1/n i=1Σnm(yi; xi; θ)
for a different functions m(y; x; θ).
Do your numerical optimzation in Matlab, R, or your package of choice. Use the standard optimation software, but donít use packages speciÖc for the problems. In each case, report the estimates θ^ obtained, and (briefly) the method used for optimization. Include your code.
1. Nonlinear-least-squares (NLLS).
m(y; x; θ) = (y - θ1x1 - θ2x2 - θ3exp (θ4x3) - θ5)2
2. Huber criterion
m(y; x; θ) = h (y - θ1x1 - θ2x2 - θ3exp (θ4x3) - θ5)
3. L4
m(y; x; θ) = (y - θ1x1 - θ2x2 - θ3exp (θ4x3) - θ5)4
4. Student t likelihood
For this application, suppose that the error ei takes the form ei = θ6ui where ui has a student t density with degree-of-freedom θ7. Thus u has the density
f(u) = (Γ(θ7+1/2)/√(θ7π)Γ(θ7/2)) (1 + u2/θ7)-(θ7+1)/2
Derive the conditional density for y given x and the conditional log-likelihood function for y. Write out m(y; x; θ) (the negative log-density). The parameters are θ = (θ1, θ2, ..., θ7).
Attachment:- ps1.dat.rar