BEGIN:VCALENDAR
VERSION:2.0
PRODID:-//Talks.cam//talks.cam.ac.uk//
X-WR-CALNAME:Talks.cam
BEGIN:VEVENT
SUMMARY:Estimating the heterogeneity distribution of willingness-to-pay us
 ing individualized choice sets - Vandebroek\, M (KU Leuven)
DTSTART:20110831T150000Z
DTEND:20110831T153000Z
UID:TALK32591@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:Mustapha Amrani
DESCRIPTION:Two prominent approaches exist nowadays for estimating the dis
 tribution of willingness-to-pay (WTP) based on choice experiments. One is 
 to work in the usual preference space in which the random utility model is
  expressed in terms of partworths. These partworths or utility coefficient
 s are estimated together with their distribution. The WTP and the correspo
 nding heterogeneity distribution of WTP is derived from these results. The
  other approach reformulates the utility in terms of WTP (called WTP-space
 ) and estimates the WTP and the heterogeneity distribution of WTP directly
 . Though often used\, working in preference space has severe drawbacks as 
 it often leads to WTP-distributions with long flat tails\, infinite moment
 s and therefore many extreme values.\n\nBy moving to WTP-space\, authors h
 ave tried to improve the estimation of WTP and its distribution from a mod
 eling perspective. In this paper we will further improve the estimation of
  individual level WTP and corresponding heterogeneity distribution by desi
 gning the choice sets more efficiently. We will generate individual sequen
 tial choice designs in WTP space. The use of this sequential approach is m
 otivated by findings of Yu et al. (2011) who show that this approach allow
 s for superior estimation of the utility coefficients and their distributi
 on. The key feature of this approach is that it uses Bayesian methods to g
 enerate individually optimized choice sets sequentially based on prior inf
 ormation of each individual which is further updated after each choice mad
 e.\nBased on a simulation study in which we compare the efficiency of this
  sequential design procedure with several non-sequential choice designs\, 
 we can conclude that the sequential approach improves the estimation resul
 ts substantially.\n\n
LOCATION:Seminar Room 1\, Newton Institute
END:VEVENT
END:VCALENDAR