Combating the Multicollinearity in Bell Regression Model: Simulation and Application

Abstract

Poisson regression model has been popularly used to model count data. However, over-dispersion is a threat to the performance of the Poisson regression model. The Bell Regression Model (BRM) is an alternative means of modelling count data with over-dispersion. Conventionally, the parameters in BRM is popularly estimated using the Method of Maximum Likelihood (MML). Multicollinearity posed challenge on the efficiency of MML. In this study, we developed a new estimator to overcome the problem of multicollinearity. The theoretical, simulation and application results were in favor of this new method.