On the surjectivity of the mapping between utilities and choice probabilities

Abstract

This note considers a standard multinomial choice model. It is shown that if the distribution of additive utility shocks has a density, then the mapping from de- terministic components of utilities to choice probabilities is surjective. In other words, any vector of choice probabilities can be obtained by selecting suitable utilities for alternatives. This result has implications for at least three areas of interest to econometricians: the Hotz and Miller (1993) estimator for structural dynamic discrete choice models, nonparametric identification of multinomial choice models, and consistency of conditional density estimators based on co- variate dependent mixtures.