23,514 research outputs found
Approximate Bayesian Computation in State Space Models
A new approach to inference in state space models is proposed, based on
approximate Bayesian computation (ABC). ABC avoids evaluation of the likelihood
function by matching observed summary statistics with statistics computed from
data simulated from the true process; exact inference being feasible only if
the statistics are sufficient. With finite sample sufficiency unattainable in
the state space setting, we seek asymptotic sufficiency via the maximum
likelihood estimator (MLE) of the parameters of an auxiliary model. We prove
that this auxiliary model-based approach achieves Bayesian consistency, and
that - in a precise limiting sense - the proximity to (asymptotic) sufficiency
yielded by the MLE is replicated by the score. In multiple parameter settings a
separate treatment of scalar parameters, based on integrated likelihood
techniques, is advocated as a way of avoiding the curse of dimensionality. Some
attention is given to a structure in which the state variable is driven by a
continuous time process, with exact inference typically infeasible in this case
as a result of intractable transitions. The ABC method is demonstrated using
the unscented Kalman filter as a fast and simple way of producing an
approximation in this setting, with a stochastic volatility model for financial
returns used for illustration
On approximating copulas by finite mixtures
Copulas are now frequently used to approximate or estimate multivariate
distributions because of their ability to take into account the multivariate
dependence of the variables while controlling the approximation properties of
the marginal densities. Copula based multivariate models can often also be more
parsimonious than fitting a flexible multivariate model, such as a mixture of
normals model, directly to the data. However, to be effective, it is imperative
that the family of copula models considered is sufficiently flexible. Although
finite mixtures of copulas have been used to construct flexible families of
copulas, their approximation properties are not well understood and we show
that natural candidates such as mixtures of elliptical copulas and mixtures of
Archimedean copulas cannot approximate a general copula arbitrarily well. Our
article develops fundamental tools for approximating a general copula
arbitrarily well by a mixture and proposes a family of finite mixtures that can
do so. We illustrate empirically on a financial data set that our approach for
estimating a copula can be much more parsimonious and results in a better fit
than approximating the copula by a mixture of normal copulas.Comment: 26 pages and 1 figure and 2 table
Fixed-Form Variational Posterior Approximation through Stochastic Linear Regression
We propose a general algorithm for approximating nonstandard Bayesian
posterior distributions. The algorithm minimizes the Kullback-Leibler
divergence of an approximating distribution to the intractable posterior
distribution. Our method can be used to approximate any posterior distribution,
provided that it is given in closed form up to the proportionality constant.
The approximation can be any distribution in the exponential family or any
mixture of such distributions, which means that it can be made arbitrarily
precise. Several examples illustrate the speed and accuracy of our
approximation method in practice
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