Volume 29, Number 2 (Spring) 1994
Nakamura, Alice O., and James R. Walker. 1994. "Model Evaluation and Choice." Journal of Human Resources 29(2):223-247.
The paper begins with a reexamination of the goals of model evaluation and choice. Desirable properties for an empirical model are stated as situational, a priori, observational and specification consistency principles. If these consistency principles are accepted as a basis for model evaluation, then one obvious approach to model choice is to consider the relative goodness of the candidate models in terms of each of the four consistency principles. Specific examples from our own empirical research are used to illustrate the advantages of the suggested multidimensional approach to model evaluation and choice.
Alice Nakamura is a professor in the Faculty of Business at the University of Alberta. James Walker is an associate professor of economics at the University of Wisconsin and a coeditor of the Journal of Human Resources. This research was supported by the U.S. Donner Foundation. It builds on an earlier working paper (Heckman, Nakamura, and Walker 1991) that was also supported by the U.S. Donner Foundation and that was presented at the February 1991 Donner Foundation Workshop on the Economics Well-Being of Women and Children held at the University of Minnesota Industrial Relations Center. The authors are grateful to Guy Orcutt, Erwin Diewert, Harriet Duleep, Jim Heckman, and Jan Kmenta for ongoing discussions and debate on points of disagreement that helped shape fundamental aspects of this paper. We also wish to thank Martin Browning, John Cragg, Masao Nakamura, Chris Nicol, Kathryn Shaw, and Ken Wolpin for helpful suggestions and comments on various versions of this paper. However, all opinions expressed and all shortcomings of the paper are the sole responsibility of the authors.
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