On the simplified pair-copula construction — Simply useful or too simplistic?

Due to their high flexibility, yet simple structure, pair-copula constructions (PCCs) are becoming increasingly popular for constructing continuous multivariate distributions. However, inference requires the simplifying assumption that all the pair-copulae depend on the conditioning variables merely through the two conditional distribution functions that constitute their arguments, and not directly. In terms of standard measures of dependence, we express conditions under which a specific pair-copula decomposition of a multivariate distribution is of this simplified form. Moreover, we show that the simplified PCC in fact is a rather good approximation, even when the simplifying assumption is far from being fulfilled by the actual model.     

Pair-Copula Bayesian Networks

Pair-copula Bayesian networks (PCBNs) are a novel class of multivariate statistical models, which combine the distributional flexibility of pair-copula constructions (PCCs) with the parsimony of conditional independence models associated with directed acyclic graphs (DAGs). We are first to provide generic algorithms for random sampling and likelihood inference in arbitrary PCBNs as well as for selecting orderings of the parents of the vertices in the underlying graphs. Model selection of the DAG is facilitated using a version of the well-known PC algorithm that is based on a novel test for conditional independence of random variables tailored to the PCC framework. A simulation study shows the PC algorithm’s high aptitude for structure estimation in non-Gaussian PCBNs. The proposed methods are finally applied to modeling financial return data. Supplementary materials for this article are available online.     

On estimation in some reduced rank extended growth curve models

The general multivariate analysis of variance model has been extensively studied in the statistical literature and successfully applied in many different fields for analyzing longitudinal data. In this article, we consider the extension of this model having two sets of regressors constituting a growth curve portion and a multivariate analysis of variance portion, respectively. Nowadays, the data collected in empirical studies have relatively complex structures though often demanding a parsimonious modeling. This can be achieved for example through imposing rank constraints on the regression coefficient matrices. The reduced rank regression structure also provides a theoretical interpretation in terms of latent variables. We derive likelihood based estimators for the mean parameters and covariance matrix in this type of models. A numerical example is provided to illustrate the obtained results.     

On the exploration of linear latent effect for multivariate modeling

A data analysis method is proposed to derive a latent structure matrix from a sample covariance matrix. The matrix can be used to explore the linear latent effect between two sets of observed variables. Procedures with which to estimate a set of dependent variables from a set of explanatory variables by using latent structure matrix are also proposed. The proposed method can assist the researchers in improving the effectiveness of the SEM models by exploring the latent structure between two sets of variables. In addition, a structure residual matrix can also be derived as a by-product of the proposed method, with which researchers can conduct experimental procedures for variables combinations and selections to build various models for hypotheses testing. These capabilities of data analysis method can improve the effectiveness of traditional SEM methods in data property characterization and models hypotheses testing. Case studies are provided to demonstrate the procedure of deriving latent structure matrix step by step, and the latent structure estimation results are quite close to the results of PLS regression. A structure coefficient index is suggested to explore the relationships among various combinations of variables and their effects on the variance of the latent structure.     

On Affine Equivariant Multivariate Quantiles

An extension of univariate quantiles in the multivariate set-up has been proposed and studied. The proposed approach is affine equivariant, and it is based on an adaptive transformation retransformation procedure. Behadur type linear representations of the proposed quantiles are established and consequently asymptotic distributions are also derived. As applications of these multivariate quantiles, we develop some affine equivariant quantile contour plots which can be used to study the geometry of the data cloud as well as the underlying probability distribution and to detect outliers. These quantiles can also be used to construct affine invariant versions of multivariate Q-Q plots which are useful in checking how well a given multivariate probability distribution fits the data and for comparing the distributions of two data sets. We illustrate these applications with some simulated and real data sets. We also indicate a way of extending the notion of univariate L-estimates and trimmed means in the multivariate set-up using these affine equivariant quantiles.     

Geometric stable laws: Estimation and applications

Geometric stable laws constitute a class of limiting distributions of appropriately normalized random sums of i.i.d. random variables. We consider the problem of estimation of the parameters of univariate and multivariate geometric stable laws. Our estimation technique is based on the method of moments and yields consistent and asymptotically normal estimators. We apply our estimators to a currency exchange data and show that the geometric stable dominates Paretian stable and normal models.     

一个基于pair-copula法构建高维相依结构的研究

用pair-copula构建高维相依结构,将n维联合密度函数转化为若干个pair-copula密度函数相乘。在pair-copula的选择上,本文构造了能描述非对称尾部相关性的混合copula函数——M-copula。并在实证分析部分用该方法探索了上证市场上四个板块的相依关系,得到了比较理想的结果。     

Multivariate Normal Slice Sampling

By introducing auxiliary variables, the traditional Markov chain Monte Carlo method can be improved in certain cases by implementing a “slice sampler.” In the current literature, this sampling technique is used to sample from multivariate distributions with both single and multiple auxiliary variables. When the latter is employed, it generally updates one component at a time.

In this article, we propose two variations of a new multivariate normal slice sampling method that uses multiple auxiliary variables to perform multivariate updating. These methods are flexible enough to allow for truncation to a rectangular region and/or exclusion of any n-dimensional hyper-quadrant. We present results of our methods and existing state-of-the-art slice samplers by comparing efficiency and accuracy. We find that we can generate approximately iid samples at a rate that is more efficient than other methods that update all dimensions at once. Supplemental materials are available online.     

Simulating Multivariate Extreme Value Distributions of Logistic Type

Methods are given for simulating from symmetric and asymmetric versions of the multivariate logistic distribution, and from other multivariate extreme value distributions based on the well known logistic model. We consider two general approaches. The first approach uses transformations to derive random variables with a joint distribution function from which it is easy to simulate. The second approach derives from a specification of conditionally independent marginal components, conditioning on positive stable random variables. This specification extends to models of nested or hierarchical type and leads to an efficient way of incorporating marginal censoring. The algorithms presented in Sections 2 and 3 are available on request from the author. They are also included in the R (Ihaka and Gentleman, 1996) package evd (Stephenson, 2002), which is available from http://www.maths.lancs.ac.uk/~stephena/.     

Covariance Decompositions for Accurate Computation in Bayesian Scale-Usage Models

Analyses of multivariate ordinal probit models typically use data augmentation to link the observed (discrete) data to latent (continuous) data via a censoring mechanism defined by a collection of “cutpoints.” Most standard models, for which effective Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) sampling algorithms have been developed, use a separate (and independent) set of cutpoints for each element of the multivariate response. Motivated by the analysis of ratings data, we describe a particular class of multivariate ordinal probit models where it is desirable to use a common set of cutpoints. While this approach is attractive from a data-analytic perspective, we show that the existing efficient MCMC algorithms can no longer be accurately applied. Moreover, we show that attempts to implement these algorithms by numerically approximating required multivariate normal integrals over high-dimensional rectangular regions can result in severely degraded estimates of the posterior distribution. We propose a new data augmentation that is based on a covariance decomposition and that admits a simple and accurate MCMC algorithm. Our data augmentation requires only that univariate normal integrals be evaluated, which can be done quickly and with high accuracy. We provide theoretical results that suggest optimal decompositions within this class of data augmentations, and, based on the theory, recommend default decompositions that we demonstrate work well in practice. This article has supplementary material online.