A graphical processing unit (GPU) is a hardware device normally used to manipulate computer memory for the display of images. GPU computing is the practice of using a GPU device for scientific or general purpose computations that are not necessarily related to the display of images. Many...

This paper presents a cross validation method for selection of statistics for Approximate Bayesian Computing, and for related estimation methods such as the Method of Simulated Moments. The method uses simulated annealing to minimize the cross validation criterion over a combinatorial search...

Standard indirect Inference (II) estimators take a given finite-dimensional statistic, Z_{n} , and then estimate the parameters by matching the sample statistic with the model-implied population moment. We here propose a novel estimation method that utilizes all available information contained...

Abstract We re-examine the theoretical concept of a production function for cognitive achievement, and argue that an indirect production function that depends upon the variables that constrain parents' choices is both more tractable from an econometric point of view, and more interesting from an...

The parameterized expectations algorithm (PEA) involves a long simulationand a nonlinear least squares (NLS) fit, both embedded in a loop. Both steps are natural candidates for parallelization.This note shows that parallelization can lead to important speedups forthe PEA.I provide example code...

Replaced by paper 575.03 in this series. Please change the 505.02 to 575.03 in your browser address bar to go to the new page, which has the download link.

Given a model that can be simulated, conditional moments at a trial parameter value can be calculated with high accuracy by applying kernel smoothing methods to a long simulation. With such conditional moments in hand, standard method of moments techniques can be used to estimate the parameter....

The Hausman (1978) test is based on the vector of differences of two estimators. It is usually assumed that one of the estimators is fully efficient, since this simplifies calculation of the test statistic. However, this assumption limits the applicability of the test, since widely used...

The paper documents MINTOOLKIT for GNU Octave. MINTOOLKIT provides functions for minimization and numeric differentiation. The main algorithms are BFGS, LBFGS, and simulated annealing. Examples are given.