pyquaidsce

pyquaidsce is a Python package for estimating Censored Quadratic Almost Ideal Demand Systems (QUAIDS). It provides a fast, native Python alternative to the original Stata quaidsce command developed by Dr. Juan Carlos Caro and colleagues, incorporating:

• Ray (1983) demographic scaling for household characteristics.
• Shonkwiler & Yen (1999) two-step correction for zero expenditure shares (censoring).
• Nonlinear SUR estimation supporting NLS, FGNLS, and Iterated FGNLS (IFGNLS).
• Elasticities: Expenditure (income), Marshallian (uncompensated), and Hicksian (compensated) price elasticities.
• Parallel bootstrap for valid standard errors and confidence intervals.
• Direct Stata compatibility: matched coefficient ordering, output tables, and exact numerical reproduction switches.

Motivation

This project originated from a very practical challenge in my own empirical research. While using the excellent Stata quaidsce command developed by Dr. Juan Carlos Caro and colleagues to estimate censored demand systems for my research, the long computation times—especially under Iterated FGNLS (IFGNLS)—became a serious bottleneck for model diagnostics, specification testing, and sensitivity analysis.

At the same time, Python offered a much more flexible and convenient environment for building automated data pipelines and scaling computational workloads on virtual servers. These two factors motivated me to develop pyquaidsce: a native Python implementation designed to preserve the rigorous econometric structure of the original Stata command while making censored QUAIDS estimation fast, practical, and easy to integrate into modern empirical workflows.

Why pyquaidsce?

Estimating censored demand systems in empirical research often requires extensive model exploration, sensitivity checks, and bootstrap replications. In Stata, estimating large censored QUAIDS models under Iterated FGNLS (IFGNLS) can take significant computing time (often 20+ minutes for a single run on moderately sized datasets).

pyquaidsce was developed to solve this practical bottleneck:

• Fast Execution: Written with optimized analytic Jacobians and vectorized linear algebra (numpy/scipy), achieving a 44.6x wall-clock speedup on the controlled benchmark reported below.
• Pure Python & Lightweight: Only requires numpy, scipy, and pandas. No complex compilation or heavy external dependencies.
• Research Workflow Integration: Easily run demand models in Jupyter notebooks, script automated sensitivity pipelines, and run on cloud servers/clusters.
• Verified Accuracy: Delivers parameter estimates and elasticities that match Stata benchmarks up to high numerical precision (within 1e-5 to 1e-7).

Installation

Clone this repository and install it locally using pip:

git clone https://github.com/sinaamiri9000-collab/pyquaidsce.git
cd pyquaidsce
pip install .

For development or editable use:

pip install -e .

Requirements: Python >= 3.9, with standard numpy, scipy, and pandas.

Quick Start

Here is a minimal example estimating a 4-good censored QUAIDS model:

import pandas as pd
from pyquaidsce import quaidsce

# Load your household data
df = pd.read_csv("household_data.csv")

# Estimate the model
res = quaidsce(
    df,
    shares=["w1", "w2", "w3", "w4"],          # Budget shares (must contain zeros if censored)
    prices=["p1", "p2", "p3", "p4"],          # Prices corresponding to each good
    expenditure="total_expenditure",           # Total expenditure across the system
    demographics=["hh_size", "urban"],         # Demographic scaling variables (Ray 1983)
    anot=10.0,                                 # Price index constant (alpha_0)
    method="ifgnls",                           # 'nls', 'fgnls', or 'ifgnls'
    first_stage_predict="pr",                  # 'pr' matches Stata; 'xb' uses linear index
    strict_stata=True,                         # Replicates Stata's exact formulas
    reps=0,                                    # Set reps=200+ for bootstrap standard errors
    verbose=True,
)

# View summary and elasticity tables
print(res.summary())
print(res.elasticity_tables())

For a step-by-step tutorial, see Getting Started. For a complete reference of all input arguments and output attributes, see the User Guide & API Reference.

Using pyquaidsce in Stata

Prefer working in Stata? pyquaidsce includes an official Stata package (pyquaidsce.ado) that lets you estimate censored QUAIDS models directly inside Stata while harnessing Python's up to 44x speedup:

// 1. Install the Stata package directly from GitHub
net install pyquaidsce, from("https://raw.githubusercontent.com/sinaamiri9000-collab/pyquaidsce/main/stata") replace

// 2. Estimate your model in Stata with familiar syntax
pyquaidsce w1 w2 w3 w4, prices(p1 p2 p3 p4) expenditure(total_exp) demographics(hh_size urban) anot(10) method(ifgnls)

// 3. Postestimation commands work seamlessly
test [beta]beta_1 = [beta]beta_2
matrix list e(elas_u)

See the Stata Package Guide for full details, options, and troubleshooting.

Key Options & Stata Compatibility

pyquaidsce provides two switches to let you choose between literal Stata replication and textbook formulas:

1. first_stage_predict:

   • "pr" (default): Replicates Stata quaidsce's default behavior, which uses the predicted probability $\Phi(X'\tau)$ inside the normal density/distribution terms.
   • "xb": Uses the linear index $X'\tau$, following the standard textbook Shonkwiler–Yen formulation.

2. strict_stata:

   • True (default): Keeps documented Stata conventions and index ordering for 1-to-1 replication against Stata .log files.
   • False: Uses corrected textbook formulas for documented edge-cases (such as models without demographics or with noquadratic).

See Stata Compatibility for methodology details, and the User Guide & API Reference for the complete list of all optimizer, convergence, and bootstrap options.

Validation & Performance Benchmark

We evaluated pyquaidsce against Stata 19.5 on a deterministic synthetic benchmark dataset with 20,000 observations, 4 goods, 3 demographic variables, censoring across all goods, and IFGNLS estimation:

• Numerical Agreement:

  • Structural parameters ($\alpha, \beta, \gamma, \lambda, \delta, \eta, \rho$): Maximum difference $< 1.68 \times 10^{-5}$
  • First-stage Probit parameters ($\tau$): Maximum difference $< 1.21 \times 10^{-7}$
  • Expenditure and price elasticities: Maximum difference $< 7.34 \times 10^{-7}$
  • Log-likelihood: Relative difference $< 4.99 \times 10^{-8}$

• Speed Comparison (Same-Machine Wall Clock):

  • Stata 19.5: 1,161.2 seconds (~19 minutes, 21 seconds)
  • pyquaidsce: 26.0 seconds
  • Speedup: ~44.6x faster

All raw data, logs, scripts, and comparison tables are available in benchmarks/cquaids_ifgnls_4g_20k/. For more details, see Validation and Performance.

Repository Structure

src/pyquaidsce/   Core Python package source code and Stata bridge
stata/            Official Stata package (pyquaidsce.ado, pyquaidsce.sthlp, pkg files)
tests/            Mathematical unit tests, theory checks, and Stata regression tests
examples/         Ready-to-run Python and Stata sample scripts
benchmarks/       Reproducible benchmark data, scripts, and logs
docs/             Methodology, getting started, Stata compatibility, and validation guides
tools/            Diagnostic scripts and Stata log comparison utilities

Documentation

• Getting Started Guide: Practical tutorial, data prep, and Stata-to-Python option map.
• User Guide & API Reference: Complete reference for all input parameters, the result object, and code examples.
• Stata Package Guide: How to install and run pyquaidsce directly within Stata.
• Methodology & Model Equations: QUAIDS model specification, Shonkwiler-Yen censoring, and elasticity derivations.
• Stata Compatibility Guide: Explanations of first_stage_predict, strict_stata, and replication tips.
• Validation Evidence: Numerical comparison across 113 parameters and elasticities against Stata.
• Performance & Benchmarking: Benchmark methodology, timing details, and optimization notes.
• Contributing: Guidelines for bug reports and contributions.

Citation

If you use pyquaidsce in your research, please cite both this package and the original Stata quaidsce command:

@software{amiri2026pyquaidsce,
  author = {Amiri, Sina},
  title = {pyquaidsce: Fast Censored QUAIDS Demand System Estimation in Python},
  year = {2026},
  url = {https://github.com/sinaamiri9000-collab/pyquaidsce}
}

@techreport{caro2021quaidsce,
  author = {Caro, Juan Carlos and Melo, Grace and Molina, J. A. and Salgado, J. C.},
  title = {Censored QUAIDS estimation with quaidsce},
  institution = {Boston College Department of Economics},
  type = {Boston College Working Papers in Economics},
  number = {1045},
  year = {2021},
  url = {https://ideas.repec.org/p/boc/bocoec/1045.html}
}

Author

Sina Amiri
Department of Economics, Shiraz University, Shiraz, Iran.

License

This project is licensed under the GNU General Public License v3.0 (GPL-3.0-only). See LICENSE for details.