Dynamic unobserved effects model

In a panel data tobit model,[1][2] if the outcome ${\displaystyle Y_{i,t}}$ partially depends on the previous outcome history ${\displaystyle Y_{i,0},\ldots ,Y_{t-1}}$ this tobit model is called "dynamic". For instance, taking a person who finds a job with a high salary this year, it will be easier for her to find a job with a high salary next year because the fact that she has a high-wage job this year will be a very positive signal for the potential employers. The essence of this type of dynamic effect is the state dependence of the outcome. The "unobservable effects" here refers to the factor which partially determines the outcome of individual but cannot be observed in the data. For instance, the ability of a person is very important in job-hunting, but it is not observable for researchers. A typical dynamic unobserved effects tobit model can be represented as

${\displaystyle Y_{i,t}=Y_{i,t}^{1}[Y_{i,t}>0];}$

${\displaystyle Y_{i,t}=z_{i,t}\delta +\rho y_{i,t-1}+c_{i}+u_{i,t};}$

${\displaystyle c_{i}\mid y_{i,0},\ldots ,y_{i,t-1}\sim F(y_{i,0}x_{i});}$

${\displaystyle u_{i,t}\mid z_{i,t},y_{i,0},\ldots ,y_{i,t-1}\sim N(0,1).}$

In this specific model, ${\displaystyle \rho y_{i,t-1}}$ is the dynamic effect part and ${\displaystyle c_{i}}$ is the unobserved effect part whose distribution is determined by the initial outcome of individual i and some exogenous features of individual i.

Based on this setup, the likelihood function conditional on ${\displaystyle \{y_{i,0}\}_{i-1}^{N}}$ can be given as

${\displaystyle \prod _{i=1}^{N}\int f_{\theta }(c_{i}\mid y_{i,0},x_{i})\left[\prod _{t=1}^{T}{\Bigl (}1[y_{i,t}=0][1-\Phi (z_{i,t}\delta +\rho y_{i,t-1}>0]{\frac {\varphi (z_{i,t}\delta +\rho y_{i,t-1}+c_{i})}{\Phi (z_{i,t}\delta +\rho y_{i,t-1}+c_{i})}}{\biggr )}\right]\,dc_{i}}$

For the initial values ${\displaystyle \{y_{i,0}\}_{i-1}^{N}}$ ,there are two different ways to treat them in the construction of the likelihood function: treating them as constant, or imposing a distribution on them and calculate out the unconditional likelihood function. But whichever way is chosen to treat the initial values in the likelihood function, we cannot get rid of the integration inside the likelihood function when estimating the model by maximum likelihood estimation (MLE). Expectation Maximum (EM) algorithm is usually a good solution for this computation issue.[3] Based on the consistent point estimates from MLE, Average Partial Effect (APE)[4] can be calculated correspondingly.[5]