A spline-assisted semiparametric approach to nonparametric measurement error models

Abstract

A spline-assisted approach is proposed to handle the measurement error problem in treating the pollution and asthma data. It is well known that the minimax rate of convergence in nonparametric regression function estimation of a random variable measured with error is much slower than the rate in the error free case. A different problem is considered. It is shown that if one is willing to impose a relatively mild assumption in requiring that the error-prone variable has a compact support, then standard nonparametric results are obtainable for measurement error models. New and constructive methods to take full advantage of the compact support assumption via spline-assisted semiparametric methods are proposed. It is proven that the new estimator achieves the usual nonparametric rate as if there were no measurement error. Furthermore it is shown that similar spline approach can be used to assess the probability density function on a compact set, using observations with error, and the resulting estimator differs from the true density function only by a constant scale. In addition, it retains the nonparametric density convergence properties of the error free case. The performance of the new methods is demonstrated through simulations and the methods are implemented to analyze the relation between asthma and pollution.