Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/51872 
Year of Publication: 
2011
Series/Report no.: 
IZA Discussion Papers No. 5748
Publisher: 
Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA), Bonn
Abstract: 
In survival analysis a large literature using frailty models, or models with unobserved heterogeneity, exist. In the growing literate on multiple spell multiple states duration models, or multistate models, modeling this issue is only at its infant phase. Ignoring unobserved heteogeneity can, however, produce incorrect results. This paper presents how unobserved heterogeneity can be incorporated into multistate models, with an emphasis on semi-Markov multistate models with a mixed proportional hazard structure. First, the aspects of frailty modeling in univariate (proportional hazard, Cox) duration models are addressed and some important models with unobserved heterogeneity are discussed. Second, the domain is extended to modeling of parallel/clustered multivariate duration data with unobserved heterogeneity. The implications of choosing shared or correlated unobserved heterogeneity is highlighted. The relevant differences with recurrent events data is covered next. They include the choice of the time scale and risk set which both have important implications for the way unobserved heterogeneity influence the model. Multistate duration models can have both parallel and recurrent events. Incorporating unobserved heterogeneity in multistate models, therefore, brings all the previously addressed issues together. Although some estimation procedures are covered the emphasis is on conceptual issues. The importance of including unobserved heterogeneity in multistate duration models is illustrated with data on labour market and migration dynamics of recent immigrants to The Netherlands.
Subjects: 
multiple spell multiple state duration
mixed proportional hazard
multistate model
unobserved heterogeneity
frailty
JEL: 
C41
J61
Persistent Identifier of the first edition: 
Document Type: 
Working Paper

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