New method accurately estimates effects of covariates on count responses.
Researchers developed a method to estimate how different factors affect the number of doctor visits using data from a health insurance experiment. They found that by using a three-step approach, they could identify and estimate the effects of covariates on the quantiles of the response variable. This method is particularly useful for zero-inflated models with subject heterogeneity, and their simulation study showed that the estimator performs well with small sample sizes.