The first account in book form of all the essential features of the quasi-likelihood methodology, stressing its value as a general purpose inferential tool. The treatment is rather informal, emphasizing essential principles rather than detailed proofs, and readers are assumed to have a firm grounding in probability and statistics at the graduate level. Many examples of the use of the methods in both classical statistical and stochastic process contexts are provided.

This book takes a fresh look at the popular and well-established method of maximum likelihood for statistical estimation and inference. It begins with an intuitive introduction to the concepts and background of likelihood, and moves through to the latest developments in maximum likelihood methodology, including general latent variable models and new material for the practical implementation of integrated likelihood using the free ADMB software. Fundamental issues of statistical inference are also examined, with a presentation of some of the philosophical debates underlying the choice of statistical paradigm. Key features: Provides an accessible introduction to pragmatic maximum likelihood modelling. Covers more advanced topics, including general forms of latent variable models (including non-linear and non-normal mixed-effects and state-space models) and the use of maximum likelihood variants, such as estimating equations, conditional likelihood, restricted likelihood and integrated likelihood. Adopts a practical approach, with a focus on providing the relevant tools required by researchers and practitioners who collect and analyze real data. Presents numerous examples and case studies across a wide range of applications including medicine, biology and ecology. Features applications from a range of disciplines, with implementation in R, SAS and/or ADMB. Provides all program code and software extensions on a supporting website. Confines supporting theory to the final chapters to maintain a readable and pragmatic focus of the preceding chapters. This book is not just an accessible and practical text about maximum likelihood, it is a comprehensive guide to modern maximum likelihood estimation and inference. It will be of interest to readers of all levels, from novice to expert. It will be of great benefit to researchers, and to students of statistics from senior undergraduate to graduate level. For use as a course text, exercises are provided at the end of each chapter.

"Maximum likelihood estimation is a general method for estimating the parameters of econometric models from observed data. The principle of maximum likelihood plays a central role in the exposition of this book, since a number of estimators used in econometrics can be derived within this framework. Examples include ordinary least squares, generalized least squares and full-information maximum likelihood. In deriving the maximum likelihood estimator, a key concept is the joint probability density function (pdf) of the observed random variables, yt. Maximum likelihood estimation requires that the following conditions are satisfied. (1) The form of the joint pdf of yt is known. (2) The specification of the moments of the joint pdf are known. (3) The joint pdf can be evaluated for all values of the parameters, 9. Parts ONE and TWO of this book deal with models in which all these conditions are satisfied. Part THREE investigates models in which these conditions are not satisfied and considers four important cases. First, if the distribution of yt is misspecified, resulting in both conditions 1 and 2 being violated, estimation is by quasi-maximum likelihood (Chapter 9). Second, if condition 1 is not satisfied, a generalized method of moments estimator (Chapter 10) is required. Third, if condition 2 is not satisfied, estimation relies on nonparametric methods (Chapter 11). Fourth, if condition 3 is violated, simulation-based estimation methods are used (Chapter 12). 1.2 Motivating Examples To highlight the role of probability distributions in maximum likelihood estimation, this section emphasizes the link between observed sample data and 4 The Maximum Likelihood Principle the probability distribution from which they are drawn"-- publisher.

Modern economies are full of uncertainties and risk. Economics studies resource allocations in an uncertain market environment. As a generally applicable quantitative analytic tool for uncertain events, probability and statistics have been playing an important role in economic research. Econometrics is statistical analysis of economic and financial data. In the past four decades or so, economics has witnessed a so-called 'empirical revolution' in its research paradigm, and as the main methodology in empirical studies in economics, econometrics has been playing an important role. It has become an indispensable part of training in modern economics, business and management.This book develops a coherent set of econometric theory, methods and tools for economic models. It is written as a textbook for graduate students in economics, business, management, statistics, applied mathematics, and related fields. It can also be used as a reference book on econometric theory by scholars who may be interested in both theoretical and applied econometrics.

In his seminal 1982 paper, Robert F. Engle described a time series model with a time-varying volatility. Engle showed that this model, which he called ARCH (autoregressive conditionally heteroscedastic), is well-suited for the description of economic and financial price. Nowadays ARCH has been replaced by more general and more sophisticated models, such as GARCH (generalized autoregressive heteroscedastic). This monograph concentrates on mathematical statistical problems associated with fitting conditionally heteroscedastic time series models to data. This includes the classical statistical issues of consistency and limiting distribution of estimators. Particular attention is addressed to (quasi) maximum likelihood estimation and misspecified models, along to phenomena due to heavy-tailed innovations. The used methods are based on techniques applied to the analysis of stochastic recurrence equations. Proofs and arguments are given wherever possible in full mathematical rigour. Moreover, the theory is illustrated by examples and simulation studies.

This book is a collection of articles that present the most recent cutting edge results on specification and estimation of economic models written by a number of the world’s foremost leaders in the fields of theoretical and methodological econometrics. Recent advances in asymptotic approximation theory, including the use of higher order asymptotics for things like estimator bias correction, and the use of various expansion and other theoretical tools for the development of bootstrap techniques designed for implementation when carrying out inference are at the forefront of theoretical development in the field of econometrics. One important feature of these advances in the theory of econometrics is that they are being seamlessly and almost immediately incorporated into the “empirical toolbox” that applied practitioners use when actually constructing models using data, for the purposes of both prediction and policy analysis and the more theoretically targeted chapters in the book will discuss these developments. Turning now to empirical methodology, chapters on prediction methodology will focus on macroeconomic and financial applications, such as the construction of diffusion index models for forecasting with very large numbers of variables, and the construction of data samples that result in optimal predictive accuracy tests when comparing alternative prediction models. Chapters carefully outline how applied practitioners can correctly implement the latest theoretical refinements in model specification in order to “build” the best models using large-scale and traditional datasets, making the book of interest to a broad readership of economists from theoretical econometricians to applied economic practitioners.