Overview
Steven Stern is an economist at the University of Virginia. His research focuses on simulation-based estimation methods and their application to labor economics, health economics, and industrial organization. He is the developer of the Stern (1992) decomposition simulator for multinomial probit and a co-author of the Berkovec-Stern (1991) retirement dynamics model.
Key Contributions / Features
- Stern (1992) decomposition simulator: decomposes the (J−1)-dimensional MNP error u∗=Z1+Z2 into independent normals, reducing the multivariate integral to a product of univariate normal CDFs simulatable with standard normals; smooth, bounded, and differentiable in parameters.
- Berkovec-Stern (1991) "Job Exit Behavior of Older Men" (Econometrica 59): DP retirement model with four choices (retire, stay, new full-time, part-time); T=32 planning horizon; three-component error (η person-specific, αj job-type, vtj time-specific); first large-scale application of simulation to a dynamic retirement model; unobserved heterogeneity standard deviations found large relative to the independent error — would be excluded without simulation.
- Stern (1997) "Simulation-Based Estimation" (Journal of Economic Literature 35): JEL survey organizing the field around the Eh(U) framework; MSM/MSL/MSS/MCMC taxonomy; implementation roadmaps; benchmark 1997 assessment of MCMC as computationally expensive.
Related