Nested Pseudo-GMM Estimation of Demand for Differentiated Products

Fuente: arXiv
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Autores principales: Aguirregabiria, Victor, Liu, Hui, Luo, Yao
Formato: Preprint
Publicado: 2026
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author Aguirregabiria, Victor
Liu, Hui
Luo, Yao
author_facet Aguirregabiria, Victor
Liu, Hui
Luo, Yao
contents We propose a fast algorithm for computing the GMM estimator in the BLP demand model (Berry, Levinsohn, and Pakes, 1995). Inspired by nested pseudo-likelihood methods for dynamic discrete choice models, our approach avoids repeatedly solving the inverse demand system by swapping the order of the GMM optimization and the fixed-point computation. We show that, by fixing consumer-level outside-option probabilities, BLP's market-share to mean-utility inversion becomes closed-form and, crucially, separable across products, yielding a nested pseudo-GMM algorithm with analytic gradients. The resulting estimator scales dramatically better with the number of products and is naturally suited for parallel and multithreaded implementation. In the inner loop, outside-option probabilities are treated as fixed objects while a pseudo-GMM criterion is minimized with respect to the structural parameters, substantially reducing computational cost. Monte Carlo simulations and an empirical application show that our method is significantly faster than the fastest existing alternatives, with efficiency gains that grow more than proportionally in the number of products.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2602_05137
institution arXiv
publishDate 2026
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Nested Pseudo-GMM Estimation of Demand for Differentiated Products
Aguirregabiria, Victor
Liu, Hui
Luo, Yao
Econometrics
65C60, 65K05, 62F12
We propose a fast algorithm for computing the GMM estimator in the BLP demand model (Berry, Levinsohn, and Pakes, 1995). Inspired by nested pseudo-likelihood methods for dynamic discrete choice models, our approach avoids repeatedly solving the inverse demand system by swapping the order of the GMM optimization and the fixed-point computation. We show that, by fixing consumer-level outside-option probabilities, BLP's market-share to mean-utility inversion becomes closed-form and, crucially, separable across products, yielding a nested pseudo-GMM algorithm with analytic gradients. The resulting estimator scales dramatically better with the number of products and is naturally suited for parallel and multithreaded implementation. In the inner loop, outside-option probabilities are treated as fixed objects while a pseudo-GMM criterion is minimized with respect to the structural parameters, substantially reducing computational cost. Monte Carlo simulations and an empirical application show that our method is significantly faster than the fastest existing alternatives, with efficiency gains that grow more than proportionally in the number of products.
title Nested Pseudo-GMM Estimation of Demand for Differentiated Products
topic Econometrics
65C60, 65K05, 62F12
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2602.05137