Can One Estimate the Conditional Distribution of Post-Model-Selection Estimators?

We consider the problem of estimating the conditional distribution of a post-model-selection estimator where the conditioning is on the selected model. The notion of a post-model-selection estimator here refers to the combined procedure resulting from first selecting a model (e.g., by a model selection criterion like AIC or by a hypothesis testing procedure) and second estimating the parameters in the selected model (e.g., by least-squares or maximum likelihood), all based on the same data set. We show that it is impossible to estimate this distribution with reasonable accuracy even asymptotically. In particular, we show that no estimator for this distribution can be uniformly consistent (not even locally). This follows as a corollary to (local) minimax lower bounds on the performance of estimators for this distribution. Similar impossibility results are also obtained for the conditional distribution of linear functions (e.g., predictors) of the post-model-selection estimator.Inference after model selection, Post-model-selection estimator, Pre-test estimator, Selection of regressors, Akaikeis information criterion AIC, Model uncertainty, Consistency, Uniform consistency, Lower risk bound

On the Formulation of Uniform Laws of Large Numbers: A Truncation Approach

The paper develops a general framework for the formulation of generic uniform laws of large numbers. In particular, we introduce a basic generic uniform law of large numbers that contains recent uniform laws of large numbers by Andrews [2] and Hoadley [7J as special cases. We also develop a truncation approach .that makes it possible to obtain uniform laws of large numbers for the functions under consideration from uniform laws of large numbers for truncated versions of those functions. The point of the truncation approach is that uniform laws of large numbers for the truncated versions are typically easier to obtain. By combining the basic uniform law of large numbers and the truncation approach we also derive generalizations of recent uniform laws of large numbers introduced in Potscher and Prucha [13, l5].