On Seemingly Unrelated Regression Model with Skew Error

Abstract

Sometimes, invoking a single causal relationship to explain dependency between variables might not be appropriate particularly in some economic problems. Instead, two jointly related equations, where one of the explanatory variables is endogenous, can represent the actual inheritance inter-relationship among variables. Such typical models are called simultaneous equation models of which the seemingly unrelated regression (SUR) models is a special case. Substantial progress has been made regarding the statistical inference on estimating the parameters of these models in which errors follow a normal distribution. But, less research was devoted to a case that the distributions of the errors are asymmetric. In this paper, statistical inference on the parameters for the SUR models, assuming the skew-normal density for errors, is tackled. Moreover, the results of the study are compared with those of other naive methodologies. The proposed model is utilized to analyze the income and expenditure of Iranian rural households in the year 2009.