Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 January 2021
In this paper, we give a two-line proof of a long-standing conjecture of Ben-Akiva in his 1973 PhD thesis regarding the random utility representation of the nested logit model, thus providing a renewed and straightforward textbook treatment of that model. As an application, we provide a closed-form formula for the correlation between two Fréchet random variables coupled by a Gumbel copula.
Date: November 12, 2020 (First draft: 7/2019). Funding from NSF grant DMS-1716489 as well as ERC grant CoG-866274 is acknowledged. The author is thankful to the editor (Peter Phillips) and two anonymous reviewers, as well as Kenneth Train, Mogens Fosgerau, Lars-Göran Mattsson, Bernard Salanié and Jörgen Weibull for helpful comments, and especially to Matt Shum for pointing out the important reference to Cardell's paper after a first version of this paper was circulated.