The so-called “mixed” or “heterogeneous” multinomial logit (MIXL) model has become popular in a number of fields, especially Marketing, Health Economics and Industrial Organization. In most applications of the model, the vector of consumer utility weights on product attributes is assumed to have a multivariate normal (MVN) distribution in the population. Thus, some consumers care more about som...

This paper compares neural network models with the standard logit and probit models, the most widely used choice/classi cation models in current empirical research, and explores the application of neural network models in analyzing political choice/classi cation problems. Political relationships are usually nonlinear and of unknown functional forms, and political data are likely noisy. The logi...

Many researchers have used the conditional logit model to examine migration. One common objection to this model is that it carries the independence from irrelevant alternatives (IIA) assumption, which may be too restrictive. This study compares the conditional logit with models that partially relax (nested logit) or fully relax (mixed logit) the IIA assumption. We will begin to learn whether as...

Summary This paper introduces a new data-driven methodology for estimating sparse covariance matrices of the random coefficients in logit mixture models. Researchers typically specify models under one two extreme assumptions: either an unrestricted full matrix (allowing correlations between all coefficients), or restricted diagonal no at all). Our objective is to find optimal subsets correlated...

There exist various service systems that have hierarchical structure. In hierarchical service networks, facilities at different levels provide different types of services. For example, in health care systems, general centers provide low-level services such as primary health care services, while the specialized hospitals provide high-level services. Because of demand congestion in service networ...