Explore the vast range of titles available.

Varying-coefficient partially linear models are frequently used in statistical modelling, but their estimation and inference have not been systematically studied. This paper proposes a profile least-squares technique for estimating the parametric component and studies the asymptotic normality of the profile least-squares estimator. The main focus is the examination of whether the generalized likelihood technique developed by Fan et al. is applicable to the testing problem for the parametric component of semiparametric models. We introduce the profile likelihood ratio test and demonstrate that it follows an asymptotically χ² distribution under the null hypothesis. This not only unveils a new Wilks type of phenomenon, but also provides a simple and useful method for semiparametric inferences. In addition, the Wald statistic for semiparametric models is introduced and demonstrated to possess a sampling property similar to the profile likelihood ratio statistic. A new and simple bandwidth selection technique is proposed for semiparametric inferences on partially linear models, and numerical examples are presented to illustrate the proposed methods.

In the last decade, significant theoretical advances have been made in the area of frequentist model averaging (FMA); however, the majority of this work has emphasized parametric model setups. This article considers FMA for the semiparametric varying-coefficient partially linear model (VCPLM), which has gained prominence to become an extensively used modeling tool in recent years. Within this context, we develop a Mallows-type criterion for assigning model weights and prove its asymptotic optimality. A simulation study and a real data analysis demonstrate that the FMA estimator that arises from this criterion is vastly preferred to information criterion score-based model selection and averaging estimators. Our analysis is complicated by the fact that the VCPLM is subject to uncertainty arising not only from the choice of covariates, but also whether the covariate should enter the parametric or nonparametric parts of the model. Supplementary materials for this article are available online.

This thesis is concerned with variable selection in linear models and partially linear models for high-dimensional data analysis. (Abstract shortened by UMI.)

We consider a partially linear framework for modeling massive heterogeneous data. The major goal is to extract common features across all subpopulations while exploring heterogeneity of each subpopulation. In particular, we propose an aggregation type estimator for the commonality parameter that possesses the (nonasymptotic) minimax optimal bound and asymptotic distribution as if there were no heterogeneity. This oracle result holds when the number of subpopulations does not grow too fast. A plug-in estimator for the heterogeneity parameter is further constructed, and shown to possess the asymptotic distribution as if the commonality information were available. We also test the heterogeneity among a large number of subpopulations. All the above results require to regularize each subestimation as though it had the entire sample. Our general theory applies to the divide-and-conquer approach that is often used to deal with massive homogeneous data. A technical by-product of this paper is statistical inferences for general kernel ridge regression. Thorough numerical results are also provided to back up our theory.

Pair-copula constructions are flexible dependence models that use bivariate copulas as building blocks. In this article, we extend them with generalized additive models to allow covariates effects. Borrowing ideas from a traditionally univariate context, we let each pair-copula parameter depend directly on the covariates in a parametric, semiparametric, or nonparametric way. We propose a sequential estimation method that we study by simulation, and apply it to investigate the time-varying dependence structure between the intraday returns on four major foreign exchange rates. An R package, scripts reproducing the results in this article, and additional simulation results are provided as supplementary material.

Empirical-likelihood-based inference for the parameters in a partially linear single-index model is investigated. Unlike existing empirical likelihood procedures for other simpler models, if there is no bias correction the limit distribution of the empirical likelihood ratio cannot be asymptotically tractable. To attack this difficulty we propose a bias correction to achieve the standard$\\chi^{2}-limit$. The bias-corrected empirical likelihood ratio shares some of the desired features of the existing least squares method: the estimation of the parameters is not needed; when estimating nonparametric functions in the model, undersmoothing for ensuring$\\sqrt{n}$-consistency of the estimator of the parameters is avoided; the bias-corrected empirical likelihood is self-scale invariant and no plug-in estimator for the limiting variance is needed. Furthermore, since the index is of norm 1, we use this constraint as information to increase the accuracy of the confidence regions (smaller regions at the same nominal level). As a by-product, our approach of using bias correction may also shed light on nonparametric estimation in model checking for other semiparametric regression models. A simulation study is carried out to assess the performance of the bias-corrected empirical likelihood. An application to a real data set is illustrated.

This article studies optimal model averaging for partially linear models with heteroscedasticity. A Mallows-type criterion is proposed to choose the weight. The resulting model averaging estimator is proved to be asymptotically optimal under some regularity conditions. Simulation experiments suggest that the proposed model averaging method is superior to other commonly used model selection and averaging methods. The proposed procedure is further applied to study Japan’s sovereign credit default swap spreads.

The complexity of semiparametric models poses new challenges to statistical inference and model selection that frequently arise from real applications. In this work, we propose new estimation and variable selection procedures for the semiparametric varying-coefficient partially linear model. We first study quantile regression estimates for the nonparametric varying-coefficient functions and the parametric regression coefficients. To achieve nice efficiency properties, we further develop a semiparametric composite quantile regression procedure. We establish the asymptotic normality of proposed estimators for both the parametric and nonparametric parts and show that the estimators achieve the best convergence rate. Moreover, we show that the proposed method is much more efficient than the least-squares-based method for many non-normal errors and that it only loses a small amount of efficiency for normal errors. In addition, it is shown that the loss in efficiency is at most 11.1% for estimating varying coefficient functions and is no greater than 13.6% for estimating parametric components. To achieve sparsity with high-dimensional covariates, we propose adaptive penalization methods for variable selection in the semiparametric varying-coefficient partially linear model and prove that the methods possess the oracle property. Extensive Monte Carlo simulation studies are conducted to examine the finite-sample performance of the proposed procedures. Finally, we apply the new methods to analyze the plasma beta-carotene level data.

We consider estimation and inference in panel data models with additive unobserved individual specific heterogeneity in a high-dimensional setting. The setting allows the number of time-varying regressors to be larger than the sample size. To make informative estimation and inference feasible, we require that the overall contribution of the time-varying variables after eliminating the individual specific heterogeneity can be captured by a relatively small number of the available variables whose identities are unknown. This restriction allows the problem of estimation to proceed as a variable selection problem. Importantly, we treat the individual specific heterogeneity as fixed effects which allows this heterogeneity to be related to the observed time-varying variables in an unspecified way and allows that this heterogeneity may differ for all individuals. Within this framework, we provide procedures that give uniformly valid inference over a fixed subset of parameters in the canonical linear fixed effects model and over coefficients on a fixed vector of endogenous variables in panel data instrumental variable models with fixed effects and many instruments. We present simulation results in support of the theoretical developments and illustrate the use of the methods in an application aimed at estimating the effect of gun prevalence on crime rates.