We study the asymptotic normality of two estimators of the integrated volatility of volatility based on the Fourier methodology, which does not require the pre-estimation of the spot volatility. We show that the bias-corrected estimator reaches the optimal rate 1/4, while the estimator without bias-correction has a slower convergence rate and a smaller asymptotic variance. Additionally, we provide simulation results that support the theoretical asymptotic distribution of the rate-efficient estimator and show the accuracy of the Fourier estimator in comparison with a rate-optimal estimator based on the pre-estimation of the spot volatility. Finally, we reconstruct the daily volatility of volatility of the S&P500 and EUROSTOXX50 indices over long samples via the rate-optimal Fourier estimator and provide novel insight into the existence of stylized facts about its dynamics.
We introduce a family of pairwise stochastic gradient estimators for gradients of expectations, which are related to the log-derivative trick, but involve pairwise interactions between samples. The simplest example of our new estimator, dubbed the fundamental trick estimator, is shown to arise from either a) introducing and approximating an integral representation based on the fundamental theorem of calculus, or b) applying the reparameterisation trick to an implicit parameterisation under infinitesimal perturbation of the parameters. From the former perspective we generalise to a reproducing kernel Hilbert space representation, giving rise to a locality parameter in the pairwise interactions mentioned above, yielding our representer trick estimator. The resulting estimators are unbiased and shown to offer an independent component of useful information in comparison with the log-derivative estimator. We provide a further novel theoretical analysis which further characterises the variance reduction afforded by the new techniques. Promising analytical and numerical examples confirm the theory and intuitions behind the new estimators.
We introduce the package "GraphicalModelsMLE" for computing the maximum likelihood estimates (MLEs) of a Gaussian graphical model in the computer algebra system Macaulay2. This package allows the computation of MLEs for the class of loopless mixed graphs. Additional functionality allows the user to explore the underlying algebraic structure of the model, such as its maximum likelihood degree and the ideal of score equations.
This paper makes the first attempt to apply newly developed upwind GFDM for the meshless solution of two-phase porous flow equations. In the presented method, node cloud is used to flexibly discretize the computational domain, instead of complicated mesh generation. Combining with moving least square approximation and local Taylor expansion, spatial derivatives of oil-phase pressure at a node are approximated by generalized difference operators in the local influence domain of the node. By introducing the first-order upwind scheme of phase relative permeability, and combining the discrete boundary conditions, fully-implicit GFDM-based nonlinear discrete equations of the immiscible two-phase porous flow are obtained and solved by the nonlinear solver based on the Newton iteration method with the automatic differentiation, to avoid the additional computational cost and possible computational instability caused by sequentially coupled scheme. Two numerical examples are implemented to test the computational performances of the presented method. Detailed error analysis finds the two sources of the calculation error, roughly studies the convergence order thus find that the low-order error of GFDM makes the convergence order of GFDM lower than that of FDM when node spacing is small, and points out the significant effect of the symmetry or uniformity of the node collocation in the node influence domain on the accuracy of generalized difference operators, and the radius of the node influence domain should be small to achieve high calculation accuracy, which is a significant difference between the studied hyperbolic two-phase porous flow problem and the elliptic problems when GFDM is applied.
We provide a decision theoretic analysis of bandit experiments. The setting corresponds to a dynamic programming problem, but solving this directly is typically infeasible. Working within the framework of diffusion asymptotics, we define suitable notions of asymptotic Bayes and minimax risk for bandit experiments. For normally distributed rewards, the minimal Bayes risk can be characterized as the solution to a nonlinear second-order partial differential equation (PDE). Using a limit of experiments approach, we show that this PDE characterization also holds asymptotically under both parametric and non-parametric distribution of the rewards. The approach further describes the state variables it is asymptotically sufficient to restrict attention to, and therefore suggests a practical strategy for dimension reduction. The upshot is that we can approximate the dynamic programming problem defining the bandit experiment with a PDE which can be efficiently solved using sparse matrix routines. We derive the optimal Bayes and minimax policies from the numerical solutions to these equations. The proposed policies substantially dominate existing methods such as Thompson sampling. The framework also allows for substantial generalizations to the bandit problem such as time discounting and pure exploration motives.
Let $X^{(n)}$ be an observation sampled from a distribution $P_{\theta}^{(n)}$ with an unknown parameter $\theta,$ $\theta$ being a vector in a Banach space $E$ (most often, a high-dimensional space of dimension $d$). We study the problem of estimation of $f(\theta)$ for a functional $f:E\mapsto {\mathbb R}$ of some smoothness $s>0$ based on an observation $X^{(n)}\sim P_{\theta}^{(n)}.$ Assuming that there exists an estimator $\hat \theta_n=\hat \theta_n(X^{(n)})$ of parameter $\theta$ such that $\sqrt{n}(\hat \theta_n-\theta)$ is sufficiently close in distribution to a mean zero Gaussian random vector in $E,$ we construct a functional $g:E\mapsto {\mathbb R}$ such that $g(\hat \theta_n)$ is an asymptotically normal estimator of $f(\theta)$ with $\sqrt{n}$ rate provided that $s>\frac{1}{1-\alpha}$ and $d\leq n^{\alpha}$ for some $\alpha\in (0,1).$ We also derive general upper bounds on Orlicz norm error rates for estimator $g(\hat \theta)$ depending on smoothness $s,$ dimension $d,$ sample size $n$ and the accuracy of normal approximation of $\sqrt{n}(\hat \theta_n-\theta).$ In particular, this approach yields asymptotically efficient estimators in some high-dimensional exponential models.
In this paper we study the finite sample and asymptotic properties of various weighting estimators of the local average treatment effect (LATE), several of which are based on Abadie (2003)'s kappa theorem. Our framework presumes a binary endogenous explanatory variable ("treatment") and a binary instrumental variable, which may only be valid after conditioning on additional covariates. We argue that one of the Abadie estimators, which we show is weight normalized, is likely to dominate the others in many contexts. A notable exception is in settings with one-sided noncompliance, where certain unnormalized estimators have the advantage of being based on a denominator that is bounded away from zero. We use a simulation study and three empirical applications to illustrate our findings. In applications to causal effects of college education using the college proximity instrument (Card, 1995) and causal effects of childbearing using the sibling sex composition instrument (Angrist and Evans, 1998), the unnormalized estimates are clearly unreasonable, with "incorrect" signs, magnitudes, or both. Overall, our results suggest that (i) the relative performance of different kappa weighting estimators varies with features of the data-generating process; and that (ii) the normalized version of Tan (2006)'s estimator may be an attractive alternative in many contexts. Applied researchers with access to a binary instrumental variable should also consider covariate balancing or doubly robust estimators of the LATE.
One of the most important problems in system identification and statistics is how to estimate the unknown parameters of a given model. Optimization methods and specialized procedures, such as Empirical Minimization (EM) can be used in case the likelihood function can be computed. For situations where one can only simulate from a parametric model, but the likelihood is difficult or impossible to evaluate, a technique known as the Two-Stage (TS) Approach can be applied to obtain reliable parametric estimates. Unfortunately, there is currently a lack of theoretical justification for TS. In this paper, we propose a statistical decision-theoretical derivation of TS, which leads to Bayesian and Minimax estimators. We also show how to apply the TS approach on models for independent and identically distributed samples, by computing quantiles of the data as a first step, and using a linear function as the second stage. The proposed method is illustrated via numerical simulations.
We provide a new analysis of local SGD, removing unnecessary assumptions and elaborating on the difference between two data regimes: identical and heterogeneous. In both cases, we improve the existing theory and provide values of the optimal stepsize and optimal number of local iterations. Our bounds are based on a new notion of variance that is specific to local SGD methods with different data. The tightness of our results is guaranteed by recovering known statements when we plug $H=1$, where $H$ is the number of local steps. The empirical evidence further validates the severe impact of data heterogeneity on the performance of local SGD.
Sufficient dimension reduction (SDR) is a successful tool in regression models. It is a feasible method to solve and analyze the nonlinear nature of the regression problems. This paper introduces the \textbf{itdr} R package that provides several functions based on integral transformation methods to estimate the SDR subspaces in a comprehensive and user-friendly manner. In particular, the \textbf{itdr} package includes the Fourier method (FM) and the convolution method (CM) of estimating the SDR subspaces such as the central mean subspace (CMS) and the central subspace (CS). In addition, the \textbf{itdr} package facilitates the recovery of the CMS and the CS by using the iterative Hessian transformation (IHT) method and the Fourier transformation approach for inverse dimension reduction method (invFM), respectively. Moreover, the use of the package is illustrated by three datasets. \textcolor{black}{Furthermore, this is the first package that implements integral transformation methods to estimate SDR subspaces. Hence, the \textbf{itdr} package may provide a huge contribution to research in the SDR field.
This paper focuses on the expected difference in borrower's repayment when there is a change in the lender's credit decisions. Classical estimators overlook the confounding effects and hence the estimation error can be magnificent. As such, we propose another approach to construct the estimators such that the error can be greatly reduced. The proposed estimators are shown to be unbiased, consistent, and robust through a combination of theoretical analysis and numerical testing. Moreover, we compare the power of estimating the causal quantities between the classical estimators and the proposed estimators. The comparison is tested across a wide range of models, including linear regression models, tree-based models, and neural network-based models, under different simulated datasets that exhibit different levels of causality, different degrees of nonlinearity, and different distributional properties. Most importantly, we apply our approaches to a large observational dataset provided by a global technology firm that operates in both the e-commerce and the lending business. We find that the relative reduction of estimation error is strikingly substantial if the causal effects are accounted for correctly.