Generalized Linear Models¶

Generalized linear models currently supports estimation using the one-parameter exponential families.

See Module Reference for commands and arguments.

Examples¶

# Load modules and data
In [1]: import statsmodels.api as sm

In [2]: data = sm.datasets.scotland.load()

In [3]: data.exog = sm.add_constant(data.exog)

# Instantiate a gamma family model with the default link function.
In [4]: gamma_model = sm.GLM(data.endog, data.exog, family=sm.families.Gamma())

In [5]: gamma_results = gamma_model.fit()

In [6]: print(gamma_results.summary())
                 Generalized Linear Model Regression Results                  
==============================================================================
Dep. Variable:                    YES   No. Observations:                   32
Model:                            GLM   Df Residuals:                       24
Model Family:                   Gamma   Df Model:                            7
Link Function:           InversePower   Scale:                       0.0035843
Method:                          IRLS   Log-Likelihood:                -83.017
Date:                Thu, 27 Mar 2025   Deviance:                     0.087389
Time:                        12:05:02   Pearson chi2:                   0.0860
No. Iterations:                     6   Pseudo R-squ. (CS):             0.9800
Covariance Type:            nonrobust                                         
======================================================================================
                         coef    std err          z      P>|z|      [0.025      0.975]
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
const                 -0.0178      0.011     -1.548      0.122      -0.040       0.005
COUTAX              4.962e-05   1.62e-05      3.060      0.002    1.78e-05    8.14e-05
UNEMPF                 0.0020      0.001      3.824      0.000       0.001       0.003
MOR                -7.181e-05   2.71e-05     -2.648      0.008      -0.000   -1.87e-05
ACT                    0.0001   4.06e-05      2.757      0.006    3.23e-05       0.000
GDP                -1.468e-07   1.24e-07     -1.187      0.235   -3.89e-07    9.56e-08
AGE                   -0.0005      0.000     -2.159      0.031      -0.001   -4.78e-05
COUTAX_FEMALEUNEMP -2.427e-06   7.46e-07     -3.253      0.001   -3.89e-06   -9.65e-07
======================================================================================

Detailed examples can be found here:

• GLM

• Formula

Technical Documentation¶

The statistical model for each observation $i$ is assumed to be

$Y_i\sim F_{EDM}(\cdot |\theta ,\varphi ,w_i)$ and ${\mu }_i=E[Y_i|x_i]=g^{-1}(x_i^{\prime }\beta )$.

where $g$ is the link function and $F_{EDM}(\cdot |\theta ,\varphi ,w)$ is a distribution of the family of exponential dispersion models (EDM) with natural parameter $\theta$, scale parameter $\varphi$ and weight $w$. Its density is given by

$f_{EDM}(y|\theta ,\varphi ,w)=c(y,\varphi ,w)\exp \left(\frac{y\theta -b(\theta )}{\varphi }w\right).$

It follows that $\mu =b^{\prime }(\theta )$ and $Var[Y|x]=\frac{\varphi }{w}{b}^{″}(\theta )$. The inverse of the first equation gives the natural parameter as a function of the expected value $\theta (\mu )$ such that

$Var[Y_i|x_i]=\frac{\varphi }{w_i}v({\mu }_i)$

with $v(\mu )=b^{″}(\theta (\mu ))$. Therefore it is said that a GLM is determined by link function $g$ and variance function $v(\mu )$ alone (and $x$ of course).

Note that while $\varphi$ is the same for every observation $y_i$ and therefore does not influence the estimation of $\beta$, the weights $w_i$ might be different for every $y_i$ such that the estimation of $\beta$ depends on them.

The Tweedie distribution has special cases for $p=0,1,2$ not listed in the table and uses $\alpha =\frac{p-2}{p-1}$.

Correspondence of mathematical variables to code:

• $Y$ and $y$ are coded as endog, the variable one wants to model

• $x$ is coded as exog, the covariates alias explanatory variables

• $\beta$ is coded as params, the parameters one wants to estimate

• $\mu$ is coded as mu, the expectation (conditional on $x$) of $Y$

• $g$ is coded as link argument to the class Family

• $\varphi$ is coded as scale, the dispersion parameter of the EDM

• $w$ is not yet supported (i.e. $w=1$), in the future it might be var_weights

• $p$ is coded as var_power for the power of the variance function $v(\mu )$ of the Tweedie distribution, see table

• $\alpha$ is either

  • Negative Binomial: the ancillary parameter alpha, see table

  • Tweedie: an abbreviation for $\frac{p-2}{p-1}$ of the power $p$ of the variance function, see table

References¶

• Gill, Jeff. 2000. Generalized Linear Models: A Unified Approach. SAGE QASS Series.

• Green, PJ. 1984. “Iteratively reweighted least squares for maximum likelihood estimation, and some robust and resistant alternatives.” Journal of the Royal Statistical Society, Series B, 46, 149-192.

• Hardin, J.W. and Hilbe, J.M. 2007. “Generalized Linear Models and Extensions.” 2nd ed. Stata Press, College Station, TX.

• McCullagh, P. and Nelder, J.A. 1989. “Generalized Linear Models.” 2nd ed. Chapman & Hall, Boca Rotan.

Module Reference¶

Model Class¶

Results Class¶

Families¶

The distribution families currently implemented are

Link Functions¶

Note: The lower case link classes have been deprecated and will be removed in future. Link classes now follow the Python class name convention.

The link functions currently implemented are the following. Not all link functions are available for each distribution family. The list of available link functions can be obtained by

>>> sm.families.family.<familyname>.links

Variance Functions¶

Each of the families has an associated variance function. You can access the variance functions here:

>>> sm.families.<familyname>.variance