Bayesian Nonparametric Modeling for Causal Inference

Researchers have long struggled to identify causal effects in nonexperimental settings. Many recently proposed strategies assume ignorability of the treatment assignment mechanism and require fitting two models—one for the assignment mechanism and one for the response surface. This article proposes a strategy that instead focuses on very flexibly modeling just the response surface using a Bayesian nonparametric modeling procedure, Bayesian Additive Regression Trees (BART). BART has several advantages: it is far simpler to use than many recent competitors, requires less guesswork in model fitting, handles a large number of predictors, yields coherent uncertainty intervals, and fluidly handles continuous treatment variables and missing data for the outcome variable. BART also naturally identifies heterogeneous treatment effects. BART produces more accurate estimates of average treatment effects compared to propensity score matching, propensity-weighted estimators, and regression adjustment in the nonlinear simulation situations examined. Further, it is highly competitive in linear settings with the “correct” model, linear regression. Supplemental materials including code and data to replicate simulations and examples from the article as well as methods for population inference are available online.     

Bayesian Inference for the One-Factor Copula Model

We develop efficient Bayesian inference for the one-factor copula model with two significant contributions over existing methodologies. First, our approach leads to straightforward inference on dependence parameters and the latent factor; only inference on the former is available under frequentist alternatives. Second, we develop a reversible jump Markov chain Monte Carlo algorithm that averages over models constructed from different bivariate copula building blocks. Our approach accommodates any combination of discrete and continuous margins. Through extensive simulations, we compare the computational and Monte Carlo efficiency of alternative proposed sampling schemes. The preferred algorithm provides reliable inference on parameters, the latent factor, and model space. The potential of the methodology is highlighted in an empirical study of 10 binary measures of socio-economic deprivation collected for 11,463 East Timorese households. The importance of conducting inference on the latent factor is motivated by constructing a poverty index using estimates of the factor. Compared to a linear Gaussian factor model, our model average improves out-of-sample fit. The relationships between the poverty index and observed variables uncovered by our approach are diverse and allow for a richer and more precise understanding of the dependence between overall deprivation and individual measures of well-being.     

Bayesian Nonparametric Inference for the Power Likelihood

The aim in this article is to provide a means to undertake Bayesian inference for mixture models when the likelihood function is raised to a power between 0 and 1. The main purpose for doing this is to guarantee a strongly consistent model and hence, make it possible to compare the consistent posterior with the correct posterior, looking for signs of discrepancy. This will be explained in detail in the article. Another purpose would be for simulated annealing algorithms. In particular, for the widely used mixture of Dirichlet process model, it is far from obvious how to undertake inference via Markov chain Monte Carlo methods when the likelihood is raised to a power other than 1. In this article, we demonstrate how posterior sampling can be carried out when using a power likelihood. Matlab code to implement the algorithm is available as supplementary material.     

Nonparametric Bayesian Modeling for Multivariate Ordinal Data

This article proposes a probability model for k-dimensional ordinal outcomes, that is, it considers inference for data recorded in k-dimensional contingency tables with ordinal factors. The proposed approach is based on full posterior inference, assuming a flexible underlying prior probability model for the contingency table cell probabilities. We use a variation of the traditional multivariate probit model, with latent scores that determine the observed data. In our model, a mixture of normals prior replaces the usual single multivariate normal model for the latent variables. By augmenting the prior model to a mixture of normals we generalize inference in two important ways. First, we allow for varying local dependence structure across the contingency table. Second, inference in ordinal multivariate probit models is plagued by problems related to the choice and resampling of cutoffs defined for these latent variables. We show how the proposed mixture model approach entirely removes these problems. We illustrate the methodology with two examples, one simulated dataset and one dataset of interrater agreement.     

Bayesian Nonparametric Modeling for Multivariate Ordinal Regression

Univariate or multivariate ordinal responses are often assumed to arise from a latent continuous parametric distribution, with covariate effects that enter linearly. We introduce a Bayesian nonparametric modeling approach for univariate and multivariate ordinal regression, which is based on mixture modeling for the joint distribution of latent responses and covariates. The modeling framework enables highly flexible inference for ordinal regression relationships, avoiding assumptions of linearity or additivity in the covariate effects. In standard parametric ordinal regression models, computational challenges arise from identifiability constraints and estimation of parameters requiring nonstandard inferential techniques. A key feature of the nonparametric model is that it achieves inferential flexibility, while avoiding these difficulties. In particular, we establish full support of the nonparametric mixture model under fixed cut-off points that relate through discretization the latent continuous responses with the ordinal responses. The practical utility of the modeling approach is illustrated through application to two datasets from econometrics, an example involving regression relationships for ozone concentration, and a multirater agreement problem. Supplementary materials with technical details on theoretical results and on computation are available online.     

多元比例响应数据的贝叶斯推断及其应用

多元比例响应数据具有有界性、归一性以及分量取值稀疏性等特点。本文在多项分布拟似然框架下基于贝叶斯方法研究多元比例数据的估计及其推断问题。通过引入Polya-Gamma分布的潜在变量,得到了易于后验抽样的Gibbs抽样算法。新方法具有估计稳健性、计算量小、推断效率高等特点,且不需要事先对响应数据作近似或变换。大量的数值模拟分析和两个实例分析验证了所提方法的有效性。     

Efficient Bayesian Inference for Multivariate Factor Stochastic Volatility Models

We discuss efficient Bayesian estimation of dynamic covariance matrices in multivariate time series through a factor stochastic volatility model. In particular, we propose two interweaving strategies to substantially accelerate convergence and mixing of standard MCMC approaches. Similar to marginal data augmentation techniques, the proposed acceleration procedures exploit nonidentifiability issues which frequently arise in factor models. Our new interweaving strategies are easy to implement and come at almost no extra computational cost; nevertheless, they can boost estimation efficiency by several orders of magnitude as is shown in extensive simulation studies. To conclude, the application of our algorithm to a 26-dimensional exchange rate dataset illustrates the superior performance of the new approach for real-world data. Supplementary materials for this article are available online.     

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In this paper, a nonparametric method for reliabilityof the stress-strength model is proposed when the dependent stress variableand strength variable are subject to right censoring. The dependence betweenvariables is measured by the common Farlie-Gumbel-Morgenstern copula functionand Clayton copula function. Using the empirical process theory, consistencyand asymptotic normality of the proposed estimator is established in thispaper. The results of numerical simulation show that the proposed methodperforms well in the case of finite sample. The method proposed in this paperhas a wide application prospect in practice.     

广义矩阵分布下多元回归模型的贝叶斯推断

考虑具有奇异矩阵椭球等高分布误差的多元线性回归模型的贝叶斯统计推断,在非信息先验下得到了系数矩阵关于Hausdorff测度的后验边缘分布和未来观察值的预测分布,并得到了一类特殊奇异矩阵椭球等高分布下误差协方差矩阵的后验边缘分布.对于具有奇异矩阵正态分布误差的多元线性回归模型,在广义正态-逆Wishart共轭先验下得到了类似的后验边缘分布和预测分布结果.在上述两种先验分布下,回归系数矩阵的后验边缘分布和预测分布是双奇异矩阵t分布,这种分布具有关于Hausdorff测度的精确密度.结果表明,在非信息先验下,回归系数矩阵的后验边缘分布和未来观察值的预测分布在奇异矩阵椭球等高分布类中具有稳健性.     

Nonparametric Quantile Inference for Cause-specific Residual Life Function Under Length-biased Sampling

This paper considers a competing risks model for right-censored and length-biased survival data from prevalent sampling. We propose a nonparametric quantile inference procedure for cause-specific residual life distribution with competing risks data. We also derive the asymptotic properties of the proposed estimators of this quantile function. Simulation studies and the unemployment data demonstrate the practical utility of the methodology.     

A Computational Approach for Full Nonparametric Bayesian Inference Under Dirichlet Process Mixture Models

Widely used parametric generalized linear models are, unfortunately, a somewhat limited class of specifications. Nonparametric aspects are often introduced to enrich this class, resulting in semiparametric models. Focusing on single or k-sample problems, many classical nonparametric approaches are limited to hypothesis testing. Those that allow estimation are limited to certain functionals of the underlying distributions. Moreover, the associated inference often relies upon asymptotics when nonparametric specifications are often most appealing for smaller sample sizes. Bayesian nonparametric approaches avoid asymptotics but have, to date, been limited in the range of inference. Working with Dirichlet process priors, we overcome the limitations of existing simulation-based model fitting approaches which yield inference that is confined to posterior moments of linear functionals of the population distribution. This article provides a computational approach to obtain the entire posterior distribution for more general functionals. We illustrate with three applications: investigation of extreme value distributions associated with a single population, comparison of medians in a k-sample problem, and comparison of survival times from different populations under fairly heavy censoring.     

Efficient Bayesian Inference for Multivariate Probit Models With Sparse Inverse Correlation Matrices

We propose a Bayesian approach for inference in the multivariate probit model, taking into account the association structure between binary observations. We model the association through the correlation matrix of the latent Gaussian variables. Conditional independence is imposed by setting some off-diagonal elements of the inverse correlation matrix to zero and this sparsity structure is modeled using a decomposable graphical model. We propose an efficient Markov chain Monte Carlo algorithm relying on a parameter expansion scheme to sample from the resulting posterior distribution. This algorithm updates the correlation matrix within a simple Gibbs sampling framework and allows us to infer the correlation structure from the data, generalizing methods used for inference in decomposable Gaussian graphical models to multivariate binary observations. We demonstrate the performance of this model and of the Markov chain Monte Carlo algorithm on simulated and real datasets. This article has online supplementary materials.     

基于局部多项式展开的多元非参数模型贝叶斯带宽选择

在多元非参数模型中带宽和阶的选择对局部多项式估计量的表现十分重要。本文基于交叉验证准则提出一个自适应贝叶斯带宽选择方法。在给定的误差密度函数下,该方法可推导出对应的似然函数,并构造带宽参数的后验密度函数。随后,通过带宽的后验期望可同时获得阶和带宽的估计。数值模拟的结果表明,该方法不仅比大拇指准则方法精确,且比交叉验证方法耗时更少。与此同时,与Nadaraya-Watson估计相比,所提带宽选择方法对多元非参数模型的适应性要更好。最后,本文通过一组实际数据说明有限样本下所提贝叶斯带宽选择的表现很好。     

非参数核密度估计与Copula

本文提出非参数核密度估计-ML方法来估计Copula函数中的未知参数;再由统计检验推断得到能较好描述金融资产之间非线性相关结构的Copula。实证分析表明:可以利用Clayton Copula、Gumbel Copula来描述A股市场上证指数与深证成指之间的非线性相关结构.     

Bayesian Inference for Hawkes Processes

The Hawkes process is a practically and theoretically important class of point processes, but parameter-estimation for such a process can pose various problems. In this paper we explore and compare two approaches to Bayesian inference. The first approach is based on the so-called conditional intensity function, while the second approach is based on an underlying clustering and branching structure in the Hawkes process. For practical use, MCMC (Markov chain Monte Carlo) methods are employed. The two approaches are compared numerically using three examples of the Hawkes process.     

极值copula的统计推断及实证研究

为了分析由极端事件所引起的巨额损失变量之间的相依关系,本文引入了比一般copula函数更有效的极值copula和上尾copula。我们介绍copula的对角截面以确定上尾相依系数。基于极大似然法,讨论了关于这些copula函数类的半参数估计方法。通过构建Cramer-Von Mises统计量对copula的拟合优度进行假设检验。在实证分析部分,我们通过具体的实例来说明,在应用研究中该如何选取最优的copula以描述变量之间的相关性。     

有关k个多元独立样本的非参数检验

设Fi(x)是Rp上总体Xi的分布函数,1≤i≤k.考虑假设问题H0:F1(x)=F2(x)=…=Fk(x),(A)z∈Rp,构造了一个检验统计量X2n,并证明当H0成立时,其渐近分布是自由度为k-1的X2分布.     

Bayesian Nonparametric Analysis for a Generalized Dirichlet Process Prior

This paper considers a generalization of the Dirichlet process which is obtained by suitably normalizing superposed independent gamma processes having increasing integer-valued scale parameter. A comprehensive treatment of this random probability measure is provided. We prove results concerning its finite-dimensional distributions, moments, predictive distributions and the distribution of its mean. Most expressions are given in terms of multiple hypergeometric functions, thus highlighting the interplay between Bayesian Nonparametrics and special functions. Finally, a suitable simulation algorithm is applied in order to compute quantities of statistical interest.     

Nonparametric Bayesian Modeling for Stochastic Order

In comparing two populations, sometimes a model incorporating stochastic order is desired. Customarily, such modeling is done parametrically. The objective of this paper is to formulate nonparametric (possibly semiparametric) stochastic order specifications providing richer, more flexible modeling. We adopt a fully Bayesian approach using Dirichlet process mixing. An attractive feature of the Bayesian approach is that full inference is available regarding the population distributions. Prior information can conveniently be incorporated. Also, prior stochastic order is preserved to the posterior analysis. Apart from the two sample setting, the approach handles the matched pairs problem, the k-sample slippage problem, ordered ANOVA and ordered regression models. We illustrate by comparing two rather small samples, one of diabetic men, the other of diabetic women. Measurements are of androstenedione levels. Males are anticipated to produce levels which will tend to be higher than those of females.