arXiv subjects

Anders Bredahl Kock

Publications and source records attributed to Anders Bredahl Kock.

25 records · Page 2Linked to original sources

arXiv2018

Optimal sequential treatment allocation

In treatment allocation problems the individuals to be treated often arrive sequentially. We study a problem in which the policy maker is not only interested in the expected cumulative welfare but is also concerned about the uncertainty/risk of the treatment outcomes. At the outset, the total number of treatment assignments to be made may even be unknown. A sequential treatment policy which attains the minimax optimal regret is proposed. We also demonstrate that the expected number of suboptimal treatments only grows slowly in the number of treatments. Finally, we study a setting where outcomes are only observed with delay.

stat.ML↗

arXiv2017

Asymptotically Honest Confidence Regions for High Dimensional Parameters by the Desparsified Conservative Lasso

In this paper we consider the conservative Lasso which we argue penalizes more correctly than the Lasso and show how it may be desparsified in the sense of van de Geer et al. (2014) in order to construct asymptotically honest (uniform) confidence bands. In particular, we develop an oracle inequality for the conservative Lasso only assuming the existence of a certain number of moments. This is done by means of the Marcinkiewicz-Zygmund inequality. We allow for heteroskedastic non-subgaussian error terms and covariates. Next, we desparsify the conservative Lasso estimator and derive the asymptotic distribution of tests involving an increasing number of parameters. Our simulations reveal that the desparsified conservative Lasso estimates the parameters more precisely than the desparsified Lasso, has better size properties and produces confidence bands with superior coverage rates.

math.ST↗

arXiv2016

Uniform Inference in High-dimensional Dynamic Panel Data Models

We establish oracle inequalities for a version of the Lasso in high-dimensional fixed effects dynamic panel data models. The inequalities are valid for the coefficients of the dynamic and exogenous regressors. Separate oracle inequalities are derived for the fixed effects. Next, we show how one can conduct uniformly valid simultaneous inference on the parameters of the model and construct a uniformly valid estimator of the asymptotic covariance matrix which is robust to conditional heteroskedasticity in the error terms. Allowing for conditional heteroskedasticity is important in dynamic models as the conditional error variance may be non-constant over time and depend on the covariates. Furthermore, our procedure allows for inference on high-dimensional subsets of the parameter vector of an increasing cardinality. We show that the confidence bands resulting from our procedure are asymptotically honest and contract at the optimal rate. This rate is different for the fixed effects than for the remaining parts of the parameter vector.

math.ST↗

arXiv2015

Sharp Threshold Detection Based on Sup-norm Error rates in High-dimensional Models

We propose a new estimator, the thresholded scaled Lasso, in high dimensional threshold regressions. First, we establish an upper bound on the $\ell_\infty$ estimation error of the scaled Lasso estimator of Lee et al. (2012). This is a non-trivial task as the literature on high-dimensional models has focused almost exclusively on $\ell_1$ and $\ell_2$ estimation errors. We show that this sup-norm bound can be used to distinguish between zero and non-zero coefficients at a much finer scale than would have been possible using classical oracle inequalities. Thus, our sup-norm bound is tailored to consistent variable selection via thresholding. Our simulations show that thresholding the scaled Lasso yields substantial improvements in terms of variable selection. Finally, we use our estimator to shed further empirical light on the long running debate on the relationship between the level of debt (public and private) and GDP growth.

stat.ME↗

arXiv2014

Oracle Inequalities for High Dimensional Vector Autoregressions

This paper establishes non-asymptotic oracle inequalities for the prediction error and estimation accuracy of the LASSO in stationary vector autoregressive models. These inequalities are used to establish consistency of the LASSO even when the number of parameters is of a much larger order of magnitude than the sample size. We also give conditions under which no relevant variables are excluded. Next, non-asymptotic probabilities are given for the Adaptive LASSO to select the correct sparsity pattern. We then give conditions under which the Adaptive LASSO reveals the correct sparsity pattern asymptotically. We establish that the estimates of the non-zero coefficients are asymptotically equivalent to the oracle assisted least squares estimator. This is used to show that the rate of convergence of the estimates of the non-zero coefficients is identical to the one of least squares only including the relevant covariates.

math.ST↗

arXiv2014

Oracle Inequalities for High-Dimensional Panel Data Models

This paper is concerned with high-dimensional panel data models where the number of regressors can be much larger than the sample size. Under the assumption that the true parameter vector is sparse we propose a panel-Lasso estimator and establish finite sample upper bounds on its estimation error under two different sets of conditions on the covariates as well as the error terms. In particular, we allow for heteroscedastic and non-gaussian error terms which are weakly dependent over time. Upper bounds on the estimation error of the unobserved heterogeneity are also provided under the assumption of sparsity. Next, we show that our upper bounds are essentially optimal in the sense that they can only be improved by multiplicative constants. These results are then used to show that the Lasso can be consistent in even very large models where the number of regressors increases at an exponential rate in the sample size. Conditions under which the Lasso does not discard any relevant variables asymptotically are also provided. In the second part of the paper we give lower bounds on the probability with which the adaptive Lasso selects the correct sparsity pattern in finite samples. These results are then used to give conditions under which the adaptive Lasso can detect the correct sparsity pattern asymptotically. We illustrate our finite sample results by simulations and apply the methods to search for covariates explaining growth in the G8 countries.

math.ST↗

arXiv2013

Oracle Inequalities for Convex Loss Functions with Non-Linear Targets

This paper consider penalized empirical loss minimization of convex loss functions with unknown non-linear target functions. Using the elastic net penalty we establish a finite sample oracle inequality which bounds the loss of our estimator from above with high probability. If the unknown target is linear this inequality also provides an upper bound of the estimation error of the estimated parameter vector. These are new results and they generalize the econometrics and statistics literature. Next, we use the non-asymptotic results to show that the excess loss of our estimator is asymptotically of the same order as that of the oracle. If the target is linear we give sufficient conditions for consistency of the estimated parameter vector. Next, we briefly discuss how a thresholded version of our estimator can be used to perform consistent variable selection. We give two examples of loss functions covered by our framework and show how penalized nonparametric series estimation is contained as a special case and provide a finite sample upper bound on the mean square error of the elastic net series estimator.

math.ST↗