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SUMMARY:Fredrik Odegaard (room: WMC 4335) (Ivey Business School (Universit
 y of Western Ontario))
DTSTART:20260220T193000Z
DTEND:20260220T210000Z
DTSTAMP:20260513T193318Z
UID:SFUOR/69
DESCRIPTION:Title: <a href="https://researchseminars.org/talk/SFUOR/69/">D
 ecoding Consumer Preferences Using Attention-Based Language Models</a>\nby
  Fredrik Odegaard (room: WMC 4335) (Ivey Business School (University of We
 stern Ontario)) as part of PIMS-CORDS SFU Operations Research Seminar\n\nL
 ecture held in ASB 10908.\n\nAbstract\nThis paper proposes a new demand es
 timation method using attention-based language models. An encoder-only lan
 guage model is trained in a two-stage process to analyze the natural langu
 age descriptions of used cars from a large US-based online auction marketp
 lace. The approach enables semi-nonparametrically estimation for the deman
 d primitives of a structural model representing the private valuations and
  market size for each vehicle listing. In the first stage\, the language m
 odel is fine-tuned to encode the target auction outcomes using the natural
  language vehicle descriptions. In the second stage\, the trained language
  model's encodings are projected into the parameter space of the structura
 l model. The model's capability to conduct counterfactual analyses within 
 the trained market space is validated using a subsample of withheld auctio
 n data\, which includes a set of unique "zero shot" instances.\n\nThis is 
 joint work with Joshua Foster.\n
LOCATION:https://researchseminars.org/talk/SFUOR/69/
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