\(\newcommand{\Eb}{{\bf E}}
\newcommand{\xb}{{\bf x}}
\newcommand{\betab}{\boldsymbol{\beta}}\)Differences in conditional probabilities and ratios of odds are two common measures of the effect of a covariate in binary-outcome models. I show how these measures differ in terms of conditional-on-covariate effects versus population-parameter effects. Read more…
In a previous post I illustrated that the probit model and the logit model produce statistically equivalent estimates of marginal effects. In this post, I compare the marginal effect estimates from a linear probability model (linear regression) with marginal effect estimates from probit and logit models.
My simulations show that when the true model is a probit or a logit, using a linear probability model can produce inconsistent estimates of the marginal effects of interest to researchers. The conclusions hinge on the probit or logit model being the true model.
Simulation results
For all simulations below, I use a sample size of 10,000 and 5,000 replications. The true data-generating processes (DGPs) are constructed using Read more…
We often use probit and logit models to analyze binary outcomes. A case can be made that the logit model is easier to interpret than the probit model, but Stata’s margins command makes any estimator easy to interpret. Ultimately, estimates from both models produce similar results, and using one or the other is a matter of habit or preference.
I show that the estimates from a probit and logit model are similar for the computation of a set of effects that are of interest to researchers. I focus on the effects of changes in the covariates on the probability of a positive outcome for continuous and discrete covariates. I evaluate these effects on average and at the mean value of the covariates. In other words, I study the average marginal effects (AME), the average treatment effects (ATE), the marginal effects at the mean values of the covariates (MEM), and the treatment effects at the mean values of the covariates (TEM).
First, I present the results. Second, I discuss the code used for the simulations.
Results
In Table 1, I present the results of a simulation with 4,000 replications when the true data generating process (DGP) satisfies the assumptions of a probit model. I show the Read more…