Computing Densities: A Conditional Monte Carlo Estimator

Abstract

We propose a generalized conditional Monte Carlo technique for computing densities in economic models. Global consistency and functional asymptotic normality are established under ergodicity assumptions on the simulated process. The asymptotic normality result allows us to characterize the asymptotic distribution of the error in density space, and implies faster convergence than nonparametric kernel density estimators. We show that our results nest several other well-known density estimators, and illustrate potential applications.