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This is an R package to estimate revealed preferences based on observed bipartite matchings.

Many problems in demography require models for partnership formation thatseparate latent preferences for partners from the availability of partners.This package consider models for matchings within a bipartite population whereindividuals have utility for people based on observed and unobserved characteristics.People can form a partnership or remain unpartnered. The models represent boththe availability of potential partners of different types and preferences ofindividuals for such people.

We develop a large-population likelihood framework to estimatepreference parameters based on sample survey data on partnerships and populationcomposition. The framework was originally due to Dagsvik (2000) and Menzel (2015).Based on simulation studies conducted in Goyal, Handcock, Jackson, Rendall and Yeung (2023),for realistic population sizes, the model recovers preference parameters that areinvariant under different population availabilities. The software uses bootstrap methods to biascorrect parameter estimates for small population sizes and produce confidence intervalsthat have the correct coverage.

The package was originally developed by Ryan M. Admiraal and Mark S. Handcock.

The package is available on CRAN and can be installed using

install.packages("rpm")

To install it, you can also use:

# If devtools is not installed:# install.packages("devtools")devtools::install_github("handcock/rpm")

To run an example use:

library(rpm)data(fauxmatching)fit <- rpm(~match("edu") + WtoM_diff("edu",3),          Xdata=fauxmatching$Xdata, Zdata=fauxmatching$Zdata,          X_w="X_w", Z_w="Z_w",          pair_w="pair_w", pair_id="pair_id", Xid="pid", Zid="pid",          sampled="sampled")summary(fit)

For details on how to construct data for input torpm() see the documentation:

help(fauxmatching)

For information on the current terms that can be used in formulas forrpm() see the documentation:

help("rpm-terms")

Please use the GitHub repository to report bugs or request features:https://github.com/handcock/rpm/issues

See the following papers for more information and examples:

• Goyal, Shuchi; Handcock, Mark S.; Jackson, Heide M.; Rendall, Michael S.; Yeung, Fiona C. (2023)A Practical Revealed Preference Model for Separating Preferences and Availability Effects in Marriage Formation,Journal of the Royal Statistical Society, A.
• Dagsvik, John K. (2000)Aggregation in Matching Markets JSTOR:https://www.jstor.org/stable/2648822,International Economic Review, Vol. 41, 27-57.
• Menzel, Konrad (2015)Large Matching Markets as Two-Sided Demand Systems,Econometrica, Vol. 83, No. 3 (May, 2015), 897-941.