The Poisson Quasi-Maximum Likelihood Estimator : A Solution to the “Adding Up” Problem in Gravity Models

This article shows that the Poisson Quasi-Maximum Likelihood (QML) estimator applied to the gravity model produces estimates in which, summing across all partners, actual and estimated total trade flows are identical. Other methods such as OLS do not have this desirable property. Indeed, Poisson is...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Arvis, Jean-François, Shepherd, Ben
Format: Journal Article
Language:en_US
Published: Taylor and Francis 2013
Subjects:
Online Access:http://hdl.handle.net/10986/13363
Description
Summary:This article shows that the Poisson Quasi-Maximum Likelihood (QML) estimator applied to the gravity model produces estimates in which, summing across all partners, actual and estimated total trade flows are identical. Other methods such as OLS do not have this desirable property. Indeed, Poisson is the only QML estimator that preserves total trade flows. This result is an additional reason for preferring Poisson as a workhorse gravity model estimator.