A fundamental aspect of relational data, such as from a social network, is
the possibility of dependence among the relations. In particular, the relations
between members of one pair of nodes may have an effect on the relations
between members of another pair. This article develops a type of regression
model to estimate such effects in the context of longitudinal and multivariate
relational data, or other data that can be represented in the form of a tensor.
The model is based on a general multilinear tensor regression model, a special
case of which is a tensor autoregression model in which the tensor of relations
at one time point are parsimoniously regressed on relations from previous time
points. This is done via a separable, or Kronecker-structured, regression
parameter along with a separable covariance model. In the context of an
analysis of longitudinal multivariate relational data, it is shown how the
multilinear tensor regression model can represent patterns that often appear in
relational and network data, such as reciprocity and transitivity.Comment: Published at http://dx.doi.org/10.1214/15-AOAS839 in the Annals of
Applied Statistics (http://www.imstat.org/aoas/) by the Institute of
Mathematical Statistics (http://www.imstat.org
