Testing of monotonicity in parametric regression models

Abstract

In data analysis concerning the investigation of the relationship between a dependent variable Y and an independent variable X, one may wish to determine whether this relationship is monotone or not. This determination may be of interest in itself, or it may form part of a (nonparametric) regression analysis which relies on monotonicity of the true regression function. In this paper we generalize the test of positive correlation by proposing a test statistic for monotonicity based on fitting a parametric model, say a higher-order polynomial, to the data with and without the monotonicity constraint. The test statistic has an asymptotic chi-bar-squared distribution under the null hypothesis that the true regression function is on the boundary of the space of monotone functions. Based on the theoretical results, an algorithm is developed for evaluating significance of the test statistic, and it is shown to perform well in several null and nonnull settings. Extensions to fitting regression splines and to misspecified models are also briefly discussed.