Thanks for this suggestion Maarten. This works quite well when there
are just one or two coefficients, but in my program I have about 64
price coefficients from which I want to calculate elasticities based
on a non-linear transformation and, while I could probably do this
using nlcom and a loop, I would ideally like to use Mata. Surely like
other languages Mata must be able to calculate the gradient of a
function?
Many thanks for any other suggestions.
George
On Tue, Jun 9, 2009 at 11:19 AM, Maarten buis<[email protected]> wrote:
>
> --- On Tue, 9/6/09, George Batchelor wrote:
>> I have an estimator in Mata that produces a set of
>> coefficient estimates and also a var-covar matrix.
>> I then transform the coefficients using a non-linear
>> process. Ordinarily I would then use the delta
>> method to calculate the var-covar matrix for
>> transformed coefficients. To do this in Stata I
>> would use "nlcom" and in Gauss I would use "gradp"
>> to find the gradient vector of the new parameters,
>> but I can not find a function to do this in Mata. Any
>> advice on how to do this would be much appreciated.
>
> One strategy you could follow is to return these intermediate
> estimates into Stata and use -nlcom- within Stata. This is
> illustrated in the silly example below.
>
> *------------- begin example ---------------
> mata
> mata drop silly()
> void silly() {
> b = 1 , 2
> V = 1 , 0 \
> 0 , 1
> st_matrix("b", b)
> st_matrix("V", V)
> }
> end
>
> capture program drop silly_estimator
> program define silly_estimator, eclass
> mata silly()
> matrix colnames b = x _cons
> matrix colnames V = x _cons
> matrix rownames V = x _cons
>
> ereturn post b V
> end
>
> silly_estimator
> nlcom _b[x]/_b[_cons]
> *-------------- end example -----------------
>
> Hope this helps,
> Maarten
>
> -----------------------------------------
> Maarten L. Buis
> Institut fuer Soziologie
> Universitaet Tuebingen
> Wilhelmstrasse 36
> 72074 Tuebingen
> Germany
>
> http://home.fsw.vu.nl/m.buis/
> -----------------------------------------
>
>
>
>
> *
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> * http://www.stata.com/help.cgi?search
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>
*
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