A Method for Minimizing the Impact of Distributional Assumptions in Econometric Models for Duration Data

Conventional analyses of single spell duration models control for unobservables using a random effect estimator with the distribution of unobservables selected by ad hoc criteria. Both theoretical and empirical examples indicate that estimates of structural parameters obtained from conventional procedures are very sensitive to the choice of mixing distribution. Conventional procedures overparameterize duration models. We develop a consistent nonparametric maximum likelihood estimator for the distribution of unobservables and a computational strategy for implementing it. For a sample of unemployed workers our estimator produces estimates in concordance with standard search theory while conventional estimators do not. ECONOMIC THEORIES of search unemployment (Lippman and McCall 34; Flinn and Heckman 14), job turnover (Jovanovic 25), mortality (Harris 17), labor supply (Heckman and Willis 23) and marital instability (Becker 3) produce structural distributions for durations of occupancy of states. These theories generate qualitative predictions about the effects of changes in parameters on these structural distributions, and occasionally predict their functional forms.2 In order to test economic theories about durations and recover structural parameters, it is necessary to account for population variation in observed and unobserved variables unless it is assumed a priori that individuals are homogeneous.3 In every microeconomic study in which the hypothesis of heterogeneity is subject to test, it is not rejected. Temporally persistent unobserved components are an empirically important fact of life in microeconomic data (Heckman 19). Since the appearance of papers by Silcock 39 and Blumen, Kogan, and McCarthy 5, social scientists have been aware that failure to adequately control for population heterogeneity can produce severe bias in structural estimates of duration models. Serious empirical analysts attempt to control for these unob