Estimating an Autoregressive Current Effects Model of Sales Response when Observations are Aggregated over Time: Least Squares versus Maximum Likelihood

Abstract

Estimating autoregressive current effects models is not straightforward when observations are aggregated over time. The author evaluates a familiar iterative generalized least squares (IGLS) approach and contrasts it to a maximum likelihood (ML) approach. Analytic and numerical results suggest that (1) IGLS and ML provide good estimates for the response parameters in instances of positive serial correlation, (2) ML provides superior (in mean squared error) estimates for the serial correlation coefficient, and (3) IGLS might have difficulty in deriving parameter estimates in instances of negative serial correlation.