mlogit (version 1.1-1)

hmftest: Hausman-McFadden Test

Description

Test the IIA hypothesis (independence of irrelevant alternatives) for a multinomial logit model.

Usage

hmftest(x, ...)
# S3 method for formula
hmftest(x, alt.subset, ...)
# S3 method for mlogit
hmftest(x, z, ...)

Arguments

x

an object of class mlogit or a formula,

...

further arguments passed to mlogit for the formula method.

alt.subset

a subset of alternatives,

z

an object of class mlogit or a subset of alternatives for the mlogit method. This should be the same model as x estimated on a subset of alternatives,

Value

an object of class "htest".

Details

This is an implementation of the Hausman's consistency test for multinomial logit models. If the independance of irrelevant alternatives applies, the probability ratio of every two alternatives depends only on the characteristics of these alternatives. Consequentely, the results obtained on the estimation with all the alternatives or only on a subset of them are consistent, but more efficient in the first case. On the contrary, only the results obtained from the estimation on a relevant subset are consistent. To compute this test, one needs a model estimated with all the alternatives and one model estimated on a subset of alternatives. This can be done by providing two objects of class mlogit, one object of class mlogit and a character vector indicating the subset of alternatives, or a formula and a subset of alternatives.

References

Hausman, J.A. and D. McFadden (1984), A Specification Test for the Multinomial Logit Model, Econometrica, 52, pp.1219--1240.

Examples

# NOT RUN {
## from Greene's Econometric Analysis p. 731

data("TravelMode", package = "AER")
TravelMode <- mlogit.data(TravelMode, choice = "choice", shape = "long",
                          alt.var = "mode", chid.var = "individual",
                          drop.index = FALSE)

## Create a variable of income only for the air mode

TravelMode$avinc <- with(TravelMode, (mode == 'air') * income)

## Estimate the model on all alternatives, with car as the base level
## like in Greene's book.

x <- mlogit(choice ~ wait + gcost + avinc, TravelMode, reflevel = "car")

## Estimate the same model for ground modes only (the variable avinc
## must be dropped because it is 0 for every observation

g <- mlogit(choice ~ wait + gcost, TravelMode, reflevel = "car",
            alt.subset = c("car", "bus", "train"))

## Compute the test

hmftest(x,g)
# }