Random Coefficient Models

Abstract

When the experimental units are animals, say, we often describe the reaction of each animal by a curve, growth versus time, velocity of some chemical reaction versus concentration etc. The estimated parameters are often without interest in themselves, but will be taken to represent a value from a population of animals. Thus we want to describe the variation between animals as random variation. The literature about this topic is very large and the same methods and models are considered by different authors from different fields. A fundamental paper is by Rao (1965), a good account of the models as applied to economics is given by Swamy (1971) and a recent survey by Spjøtvoll (1977). An extensive bibliography can be found in Johnson (1977), (1980).