arXiv subjects

Roberto Casarin

Publications and source records attributed to Roberto Casarin.

At least 19 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2026

A Spatiotemporal Gamma Shot Noise Cox Process

A new discrete-time shot noise Cox process for spatiotemporal data is proposed. The random intensity is driven by a dependent sequence of latent gamma random measures. Some properties of the latent process are derived, such as an autoregressive representation and the Laplace functional. A simulation method based on the Inverse Lévy Measure algorithm is provided. Moreover, these results are used to derive the moment, predictive, and pair correlation measures for the proposed shot noise Cox process. The model is flexible yet tractable, allowing it to capture persistence, global trends, and latent spatial and temporal factors. A Bayesian inference approach is adopted, and efficient Markov Chain Monte Carlo algorithms based on conditional Sequential Monte Carlo and adaptive Metropolis-Hastings are proposed. An application to georeferenced wildfire data illustrates the properties of the model and inference.

stat.ME↗

arXiv2026

Compressed Bayesian Tensor Regression

To address the common problem of high dimensionality in tensor regressions, we introduce a generalized tensor random projection method that embeds high-dimensional tensor-valued covariates into low-dimensional subspaces with minimal loss of information about the responses. The method is flexible, allowing for tensor-wise, mode-wise, or combined random projections as special cases. A Bayesian inference framework is provided featuring the use of a hierarchical prior distribution and a low-rank representation of the parameter. Strong theoretical support is provided for the concentration properties of the random projection and posterior consistency of the Bayesian inference. An efficient Gibbs sampler is developed to perform inference on the compressed data. To mitigate the sensitivity introduced by random projections, Bayesian model averaging is employed, with normalising constants estimated using reverse logistic regression. An extensive simulation study is conducted to examine the effects of different tuning parameters. Simulations indicate, and the real data application confirms, that compressed Bayesian tensor regression can achieve better out-of-sample prediction while significantly reducing computational cost compared to standard Bayesian tensor regression.

stat.ME↗

arXiv2026

A Bayesian Dynamic Latent Space Model for Weighted Networks

A new dynamic latent space eigenmodel (LSM) is proposed for weighted temporal networks. The model accommodates integer-valued weights, excess of zeros, time-varying node positions (features), and time-varying network sparsity. The latent positions evolve according to a vector autoregressive process that accounts for lagged and contemporaneous dependence across nodes and features, a characteristic neglected in the LSM literature. A Bayesian approach is used to address two of the primary sources of inference intractability in dynamic LSMs: latent feature estimation and the choice of latent space dimension. We employ an efficient auxiliary-mixture sampler that performs data augmentation and supports conditionally conjugate prior distributions. A point-process representation of the network weights and the finite-dimensional distribution of the latent processes are used to derive a multi-move sampler in which each feature trajectory is drawn in a single block, without recursions. This sampling strategy is new to the network literature and can significantly reduce computational time while improving chain mixing. To avoid trans-dimensional samplers, a Laplace approximation of the partial marginal likelihood is used to design a partially collapsed Gibbs sampler. Overall, our procedure is general, as it can be easily adapted to static and dynamic settings, as well as to other discrete or continuous weight distributions.

stat.ME↗

arXiv2026

Generalized Poisson Dynamic Network Models

Count-weighted temporal networks often exhibit unequal dispersion in the edge weights, which cannot be fully explained by modelling observational heterogeneity through latent factors in the conditional mean. Therefore, we propose new dynamic network model classes exploiting the Generalized Poisson distribution to capture both under- and overdispersion. We consider three different dynamic specifications: latent factor dynamics, autoregressive dynamics, and latent position dynamics, and study some theoretical properties of the random networks, showing the impact of the dispersion parameter on the random network's connectivity. After discussing the parameter identification strategy, we present a Bayesian inference procedure along with a posterior sampling algorithm. A numerical illustration demonstrates the effectiveness of the designed algorithm and provides estimates of the misspecification bias when unequal dispersion is neglected. Our new models are then applied to two relevant dynamic datasets considered in previous studies: a set of bike-sharing dynamic networks and a set of dynamic media networks. Our results highlight the importance of explicitly modeling overdispersion for both an accurate in-sample fit and out-of-sample performance.

stat.ME↗

arXiv2025

Media Bias and Polarization through the Lens of a Markov Switching Latent Space Network Model

News outlets are now more than ever incentivized to provide their audience with slanted news, while the intrinsic homophilic nature of online social media may exacerbate polarized opinions. Here, we propose a new dynamic latent space model for time-varying online audience-duplication networks, which exploits social media content to conduct inference on media bias and polarization of news outlets. We contribute to the literature in several directions: 1) Our model provides a novel measure of media bias that combines information from both network data and text-based indicators; 2) we endow our model with Markov-Switching dynamics to capture polarization regimes while maintaining a parsimonious specification; 3) we contribute to the literature on the statistical properties of latent space network models. The proposed model is applied to a set of data on the online activity of national and local news outlets from four European countries in the years 2015 and 2016. We find evidence of a strong positive correlation between our media slant measure and a well-grounded external source of media bias. In addition, we provide insight into the polarization regimes across the four countries considered.

stat.AP↗

arXiv2025

Bayesian Outlier Detection for Matrix-variate Models

Anomalies in economic and financial data -- often linked to rare yet impactful events -- are of theoretical interest, but can also severely distort inference. Although outlier-robust methodologies can be used, many researchers prefer pre-processing strategies that remove outliers. In this work, an efficient sequential Bayesian framework is proposed for outlier detection based on the predictive Bayes Factor (BF). The proposed method is specifically designed for large, multidimensional datasets and extends univariate Bayesian model outlier detection procedures to the matrix-variate setting. Leveraging power-discounted priors, tractable predictive BF are obtained, thereby avoiding computationally intensive techniques. The BF finite sample distribution, the test critical region, and robust extensions of the test are introduced by exploiting the sampling variability. The framework supports online detection with analytical tractability, ensuring both accuracy and scalability. Its effectiveness is demonstrated through simulations, and three applications to reference datasets in macroeconomics and finance are provided.

stat.ME↗

arXiv2025

A Dynamic Stochastic Block Model for Multidimensional Networks

The availability of relational data can offer new insights into the functioning of the economy. Nevertheless, modeling the dynamics in network data with multiple types of relationships is still a challenging issue. Stochastic block models provide a parsimonious and flexible approach to network analysis. We propose a new stochastic block model for multidimensional networks, where layer-specific hidden Markov-chain processes drive the changes in community formation. The changes in the block membership of a node in a given layer may be influenced by its own past membership in other layers. This allows for clustering overlap, clustering decoupling, or more complex relationships between layers, including settings of unidirectional, or bidirectional, non-linear Granger block causality. We address the overparameterization issue of a saturated specification by assuming a Multi-Laplacian prior distribution within a Bayesian framework. Data augmentation and Gibbs sampling are used to make the inference problem more tractable. Through simulations, we show that standard linear models and the pairwise approach are unable to detect block causality in most scenarios. In contrast, our model can recover the true Granger causality structure. As an application to international trade, we show that our model offers a unified framework, encompassing community detection and Gravity equation modeling. We found new evidence of block Granger causality of trade agreements and flows and core-periphery structure in both layers on a large sample of countries.

stat.ME↗

arXiv2024

First-order integer-valued autoregressive processes with Generalized Katz innovations

A new integer--valued autoregressive process (INAR) with Generalised Lagrangian Katz (GLK) innovations is defined. This process family provides a flexible modelling framework for count data, allowing for under and over--dispersion, asymmetry, and excess of kurtosis and includes standard INAR models such as Generalized Poisson and Negative Binomial as special cases. We show that the GLK--INAR process is discrete semi--self--decomposable, infinite divisible, stable by aggregation and provides stationarity conditions. Some extensions are discussed, such as the Markov--Switching and the zero--inflated GLK--INARs. A Bayesian inference framework and an efficient posterior approximation procedure are introduced. The proposed models are applied to 130 time series from Google Trend, which proxy the worldwide public concern about climate change. New evidence is found of heterogeneity across time, countries and keywords in the persistence, uncertainty, and long--run public awareness level.

stat.ME↗

arXiv2024

Comment on 'Sparse Bayesian Factor Analysis when the Number of Factors is Unknown' by S. Frühwirth-Schnatter, D. Hosszejni, and H. Freitas Lopes

The techniques suggested in Frühwirth-Schnatter et al. (2024) concern sparsity and factor selection and have enormous potential beyond standard factor analysis applications. We show how these techniques can be applied to Latent Space (LS) models for network data. These models suffer from well-known identification issues of the latent factors due to likelihood invariance to factor translation, reflection, and rotation (see Hoff et al., 2002). A set of observables can be instrumental in identifying the latent factors via auxiliary equations (see Liu et al., 2021). These, in turn, share many analogies with the equations used in factor modeling, and we argue that the factor loading restrictions may be beneficial for achieving identification.

stat.ME↗

arXiv2024

Bayesian Dynamic Quantile Model Averaging

This article introduces a novel dynamic framework to Bayesian model averaging for time-varying parameter quantile regressions. By employing sequential Markov chain Monte Carlo, we combine empirical estimates derived from dynamically chosen quantile regressions, thereby facilitating a comprehensive understanding of the quantile model instabilities. The effectiveness of our methodology is initially validated through the examination of simulated datasets and, subsequently, by two applications to the US inflation rates and to the US real estate market. Our empirical findings suggest that a more intricate and nuanced analysis is needed when examining different sub-period regimes, since the determinants of inflation and real estate prices are clearly shown to be time-varying. In conclusion, we suggest that our proposed approach could offer valuable insights to aid decision making in a rapidly changing environment.

math.ST↗

arXiv2024

A Multiple Random Scan Strategy for Latent Space Models

Latent Space (LS) network models project the nodes of a network on a $d$-dimensional latent space to achieve dimensionality reduction of the network while preserving its relevant features. Inference is often carried out within a Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) framework. Nonetheless, it is well-known that the computational time for this set of models increases quadratically with the number of nodes. In this work, we build on the Random-Scan (RS) approach to propose an MCMC strategy that alleviates the computational burden for LS models while maintaining the benefits of a general-purpose technique. We call this novel strategy Multiple RS (MRS). This strategy is effective in reducing the computational cost by a factor without severe consequences on the MCMC draws. Moreover, we introduce a novel adaptation strategy that consists of a probabilistic update of the set of latent coordinates of each node. Our Adaptive MRS adapts the acceptance rate of the Metropolis step to adjust the probability of updating the latent coordinates. We show via simulation that the Adaptive MRS approach performs better than MRS in terms of mixing. Finally, we apply our algorithm to a multi-layer temporal LS model and show how our adaptive strategy may be beneficial to empirical applications.

stat.CO↗

arXiv2024

Markov Switching Multiple-equation Tensor Regressions

We propose a new flexible tensor model for multiple-equation regression that accounts for latent regime changes. The model allows for dynamic coefficients and multi-dimensional covariates that vary across equations. We assume the coefficients are driven by a common hidden Markov process that addresses structural breaks to enhance the model flexibility and preserve parsimony. We introduce a new Soft PARAFAC hierarchical prior to achieve dimensionality reduction while preserving the structural information of the covariate tensor. The proposed prior includes a new multi-way shrinking effect to address over-parametrization issues. We developed theoretical results to help hyperparameter choice. An efficient MCMC algorithm based on random scan Gibbs and back-fitting strategy is developed to achieve better computational scalability of the posterior sampling. The validity of the MCMC algorithm is demonstrated theoretically, and its computational efficiency is studied using numerical experiments in different parameter settings. The effectiveness of the model framework is illustrated using two original real data analyses. The proposed model exhibits superior performance when compared to the current benchmark, Lasso regression.

stat.ME↗

arXiv2021

Living on the Edge: An Unified Approach to Antithetic Sampling

We identify recurrent ingredients in the antithetic sampling literature leading to a unified sampling framework. We introduce a new class of antithetic schemes that includes the most used antithetic proposals. This perspective enables the derivation of new properties of the sampling schemes: i) optimality in the Kullback-Leibler sense; ii) closed-form multivariate Kendall's $τ$ and Spearman's $ρ$; iii)ranking in concordance order and iv) a central limit theorem that characterizes stochastic behavior of Monte Carlo estimators when the sample size tends to infinity. Finally, we provide applications to Monte Carlo integration and Markov Chain Monte Carlo Bayesian estimation.

stat.ME↗

arXiv2020

The impact of Climate on Economic and Financial Cycles: A Markov-switching Panel Approach

This paper examines the impact of climate shocks on 13 European economies analysing jointly business and financial cycles, in different phases and disentangling the effects for different sector channels. A Bayesian Panel Markov-switching framework is proposed to jointly estimate the impact of extreme weather events on the economies as well as the interaction between business and financial cycles. Results from the empirical analysis suggest that extreme weather events impact asymmetrically across the different phases of the economy and heterogeneously across the EU countries. Moreover, we highlight how the manufacturing output, a component of the industrial production index, constitutes the main channel through which climate shocks impact the EU economies.

econ.EM↗

arXiv2020

Bayesian nonparametric panel Markov-switching GARCH models

This paper introduces a new model for panel data with Markov-switching GARCH effects. The model incorporates a series-specific hidden Markov chain process that drives the GARCH parameters. To cope with the high-dimensionality of the parameter space, the paper exploits the cross-sectional clustering of the series by first assuming a soft parameter pooling through a hierarchical prior distribution with two-step procedure, and then introducing clustering effects in the parameter space through a nonparametric prior distribution. The model and the proposed inference are evaluated through a simulation experiment. The results suggest that the inference is able to recover the true value of the parameters and the number of groups in each regime. An empirical application to 78 assets of the SP\&100 index from $6^{th}$ January 2000 to $3^{rd}$ October 2020 is also carried out by using a two-regime Markov switching GARCH model. The findings shows the presence of 2 and 3 clusters among the constituents in the first and second regime, respectively.

stat.ME↗

arXiv2020

Generalized Poisson Difference Autoregressive Processes

This paper introduces a new stochastic process with values in the set Z of integers with sign. The increments of process are Poisson differences and the dynamics has an autoregressive structure. We study the properties of the process and exploit the thinning representation to derive stationarity conditions and the stationary distribution of the process. We provide a Bayesian inference method and an efficient posterior approximation procedure based on Monte Carlo. Numerical illustrations on both simulated and real data show the effectiveness of the proposed inference.

stat.ME↗

arXiv2019

Bayesian Dynamic Tensor Regression

Tensor-valued data are becoming increasingly available in economics and this calls for suitable econometric tools. We propose a new dynamic linear model for tensor-valued response variables and covariates that encompasses some well-known econometric models as special cases. Our contribution is manifold. First, we define a tensor autoregressive process (ART), study its properties and derive the associated impulse response function. Second, we exploit the PARAFAC low-rank decomposition for providing a parsimonious parametrization and to incorporate sparsity effects. We also contribute to inference methods for tensors by developing a Bayesian framework which allows for including extra-sample information and for introducing shrinking effects. We apply the ART model to time-varying multilayer networks of international trade and capital stock and study the propagation of shocks across countries, over time and between layers.

stat.ME↗

arXiv2019

Bayesian Markov Switching Tensor Regression for Time-varying Networks

We propose a new Bayesian Markov switching regression model for multidimensional arrays (tensors) of binary time series. We assume a zero-inflated logit regression with time-varying parameters and apply it to multilayer temporal networks. The original contribution is threefold. First, to avoid over-fitting we propose a parsimonious parametrization based on a low-rank decomposition of the tensor of regression coefficients. Second, we assume the parameters are driven by a hidden Markov chain, thus allowing for structural changes in the network topology. We follow a Bayesian approach to inference and provide an efficient Gibbs sampler for posterior approximation. We apply the methodology to a real dataset of financial networks to study the impact of several risk factors on the edge probability. Supplementary materials for this article are available online.

stat.ME↗