Pivotal estimation via square-root Lasso in nonparametric regression

We propose a self-tuning $\sqrt{\mathrm {Lasso}}$ method that simultaneously resolves three important practical problems in high-dimensional regression analysis, namely it handles the unknown scale, heteroscedasticity and (drastic) non-Gaussianity of the noise. In addition, our analysis allows for badly behaved designs, for example, perfectly collinear regressors, and generates sharp bounds even in extreme cases, such as the infinite variance case and the noiseless case, in contrast to Lasso. We establish various nonasymptotic bounds for $\sqrt{\mathrm {Lasso}}$ including prediction norm rate and sparsity. Our analysis is based on new impact factors that are tailored for bounding prediction norm. In order to cover heteroscedastic non-Gaussian noise, we rely on moderate deviation theory for self-normalized sums to achieve Gaussian-like results under weak conditions. Moreover, we derive bounds on the performance of ordinary least square (ols) applied to the model selected by $\sqrt{\mathrm {Lasso}}$ accounting for possible misspecification of the selected model. Under mild conditions, the rate of convergence of ols post $\sqrt{\mathrm {Lasso}}$ is as good as $\sqrt{\mathrm {Lasso}}$'s rate. As an application, we consider the use of $\sqrt{\mathrm {Lasso}}$ and ols post $\sqrt{\mathrm {Lasso}}$ as estimators of nuisance parameters in a generic semiparametric problem (nonlinear moment condition or $Z$-problem), resulting in a construction of $\sqrt{n}$-consistent and asymptotically normal estimators of the main parameters.Comment: Published in at http://dx.doi.org/10.1214/14-AOS1204 the Annals of Statistics (http://www.imstat.org/aos/) by the Institute of Mathematical Statistics (http://www.imstat.org

There is a VaR beyond usual approximations

Basel II and Solvency 2 both use the Value-at-Risk (VaR) as the risk measure to compute the Capital Requirements. In practice, to calibrate the VaR, a normal approximation is often chosen for the unknown distribution of the yearly log returns of financial assets. This is usually justified by the use of the Central Limit Theorem (CLT), when assuming aggregation of independent and identically distributed (iid) observations in the portfolio model. Such a choice of modeling, in particular using light tail distributions, has proven during the crisis of 2008/2009 to be an inadequate approximation when dealing with the presence of extreme returns; as a consequence, it leads to a gross underestimation of the risks. The main objective of our study is to obtain the most accurate evaluations of the aggregated risks distribution and risk measures when working on financial or insurance data under the presence of heavy tail and to provide practical solutions for accurately estimating high quantiles of aggregated risks. We explore a new method, called Normex, to handle this problem numerically as well as theoretically, based on properties of upper order statistics. Normex provides accurate results, only weakly dependent upon the sample size and the tail index. We compare it with existing methods.Comment: 33 pages, 5 figure

Precise Deviations Results for the Maxima of Some Determinantal Point Processes: the Upper Tail

We prove precise deviations results in the sense of Cram\'er and Petrov for the upper tail of the distribution of the maximal value for a special class of determinantal point processes that play an important role in random matrix theory. Here we cover all three regimes of moderate, large and superlarge deviations for which we determine the leading order description of the tail probabilities. As a corollary of our results we identify the region within the regime of moderate deviations for which the limiting Tracy-Widom law still predicts the correct leading order behavior. Our proofs use that the determinantal point process is given by the Christoffel-Darboux kernel for an associated family of orthogonal polynomials. The necessary asymptotic information on this kernel has mostly been obtained in [Kriecherbauer T., Schubert K., Sch\"uler K., Venker M., Markov Process. Related Fields 21 (2015), 639-694]. In the superlarge regime these results of do not suffice and we put stronger assumptions on the point processes. The results of the present paper and the relevant parts of [Kriecherbauer T., Schubert K., Sch\"uler K., Venker M., Markov Process. Related Fields 21 (2015), 639-694] have been proved in the dissertation [Sch\"uler K., Ph.D. Thesis, Universit\"at Bayreuth, 2015].Comment: 18 page