Standard Information Criteria Research Articles

Stringy running vacuum model and current tensions in cosmology

We discuss the potential alleviation of both the Hubble and the growth of galactic structure data tensions observed in the current epoch of cosmology in the context of the so-called stringy running vacuum model (RVM) of cosmology. This is a gravitational field theory coupled to matter, which, at early eras, contains gravitational (Chern–Simons (CS) type) anomalies and torsion, arising from the fundamental degrees of freedom of the massless gravitational multiplet of an underlying microscopic string theory. The model leads to RVM type inflation without external inflatons, arising from the quartic powers of the Hubble parameter that characterize the vacuum energy density due to primordial-gravitational-wave-induced anomaly CS condensates, and dominate the inflationary era. In modern eras, of relevance to this work, the gravitational anomalies are cancelled by chiral matter, generated at the end of the RVM inflationary era, but cosmic radiation and other matter fields are still responsible for a RVM energy density with terms exhibiting a quadratic-power-of-Hubble-parameter dependence, but also products of the latter with logarithmic H-dependencies, arising from potential quantum-gravity and quantum-matter loop effects. In this work, such terms are examined phenomenologically from the point of view of the potential alleviation of the aforementioned current tensions in cosmology. Using standard information criteria, we find that these tensions can be substantially alleviated in a way consistent not only with the data, but also with the underlying microscopic theory predictions, associated with the primordial dynamical breaking of supergravity that characterize a pre-RVM-inflationary phase of the model.

Introducing Two Parsimonious Standard Power Mixture Models for Bimodal Proportional Data with Application to Loss Given Default

The need to model proportional data is common in a range of disciplines however, due to its bimodal nature, U- or J-shaped data present a particular challenge. In this study, two parsimonious mixture models are proposed to accurately characterise this proportional U- and J-shaped data. The proposed models are applied to loss given default data, an application area where specific importance is attached to the accuracy with which the mean is estimated, due to its linear relationship with a bank’s regulatory capital. In addition to using standard information criteria, the degree to which bias reduction in the estimation of the distributional mean can be achieved is used as a measure of model performance. The proposed models outperform the benchmark model with reference to the information criteria and yield a reduction in the distance between the empirical and distributional means. Given the special characteristics of the dataset, where a high proportion of observations are close to zero, a methodology for choosing a rounding threshold in an objective manner is developed as part of the data preparation stage. It is shown how the application of this rounding threshold can reduce bias in moment estimation regardless of the model choice.

Inference in skew generalized t-link models for clustered binary outcome via a parameter-expanded EM algorithm.

Binary Generalized Linear Mixed Model (GLMM) is the most common method used by researchers to analyze clustered binary data in biological and social sciences. The traditional approach to GLMMs causes substantial bias in estimates due to steady shape of logistic and normal distribution assumptions thereby resulting into wrong and misleading decisions. This study brings forward an approach governed by skew generalized t distributions that belong to a class of potentially skewed and heavy tailed distributions. Interestingly, both the traditional logistic and probit mixed models, as well as other available methods can be utilized within the skew generalized t-link model (SGTLM) frame. We have taken advantage of the Expectation-Maximization algorithm accelerated via parameter-expansion for model fitting. We evaluated the performance of this approach to GLMMs through a simulation experiment by varying sample size and data distribution. Our findings indicated that the proposed methodology outperforms competing approaches in estimating population parameters and predicting random effects, when the traditional link and normality assumptions are violated. In addition, empirical standard errors and information criteria proved useful for detecting spurious skewness and avoiding complex models for probit data. An application with respiratory infection data points out to the superiority of the SGTLM which turns to be the most adequate model. In future, studies should focus on integrating the demonstrated flexibility in other generalized linear mixed models to enhance robust modeling.

Spurious Factor Analysis

This paper draws parallels between the principal components analysis of factorless high‐dimensional nonstationary data and the classical spurious regression. We show that a few of the principal components of such data absorb nearly all the data variation. The corresponding scree plot suggests that the data contain a few factors, which is corroborated by the standard panel information criteria. Furthermore, the Dickey–Fuller tests of the unit root hypothesis applied to the estimated “idiosyncratic terms” often reject, creating an impression that a few factors are responsible for most of the nonstationarity in the data. We warn empirical researchers of these peculiar effects and suggest to always compare the analysis in levels with that in differences.

Comparing Model Selection Criteria to Distinguish Truncated Operational Risk Models

In this paper three information criteria are employed to assess the truncated operational risk models. The performances of the three information criteria on distinguishing the models are compared. The competing models are constructed using Champernowne, Frechet, Lognormal, Lomax, Paralogistic, and Weibull distributions, respectively. Simulation studies are conducted before a case study. In the case study, certain distributional models conform to the external fraud type of risk data in retail banking of Chinese banks. However, those models are difficult to distinguish using standard information criteria such as Akaike Information Criterion and Bayesian Information Criterion. We have found no single information criterion is absolutely more effective than others in the simulation studies. But the information complexity based ICOMP criterion says a little bit more if AIC and/or BIC cannot kick the Lognormal model out of the pool of competing models.

Likelihood Ratio-Based Tests for Markov Regime Switching

Abstract Markov regime-switching models are very common in economics and finance. Despite persisting interest in them, the asymptotic distributions of likelihood ratio-based tests for detecting regime switching remain unknown. This study examines such tests and establishes their asymptotic distributions in the context of nonlinear models, allowing multiple parameters to be affected by regime switching. The analysis addresses three difficulties: (i) some nuisance parameters are unidentified under the null hypothesis, (ii) the null hypothesis yields a local optimum, and (iii) the conditional regime probabilities follow stochastic processes that can only be represented recursively. Addressing these issues permits substantial power gains in empirically relevant settings. This study also presents the following results: (1) a characterization of the conditional regime probabilities and their derivatives with respect to the model’s parameters, (2) a high-order approximation to the log-likelihood ratio, (3) a refinement of the asymptotic distribution, and (4) a unified algorithm to simulate the critical values. For models that are linear under the null hypothesis, the elements needed for the algorithm can all be computed analytically. Furthermore, the above results explain why some bootstrap procedures can be inconsistent, and why standard information criteria can be sensitive to the hypothesis and the model structure. When applied to US quarterly real gross domestic product (GDP) growth rate data, the methods detect relatively strong evidence favouring the regime-switching specification. Lastly, we apply the methods in the context of dynamic stochastic equilibrium models and obtain similar results as the GDP case.

Level shift estimation in the presence of non-stationary volatility with an application to the unit root testing problem

This paper focuses on the estimation of the location of level breaks in time series whose shocks display non-stationary volatility (permanent changes in unconditional volatility). We propose a new feasible weighted least squares (WLS) estimator, based on an adaptive estimate of the volatility path of the shocks. We show that this estimator belongs to a generic class of weighted residual sum of squares which also contains the ordinary least squares (OLS) and WLS estimators, the latter based on the true volatility process. For fixed magnitude breaks we show that the consistency rate of the generic estimator is unaffected by non-stationary volatility. We also provide local limiting distribution theory for cases where the break magnitude is either local-to-zero at some polynomial rate in the sample size or is exactly zero. The former includes the Pitman drift rate which is shown via Monte Carlo experiments to predict well the key features of the finite sample behaviour of both the OLS and our feasible WLS estimators. The simulations highlight the importance of the break location, break magnitude, and the form of non-stationary volatility for the finite sample performance of these estimators, and show that our proposed feasible WLS estimator can deliver significant improvements over the OLS estimator under heteroskedasticity. We discuss how these results can be applied, by using level break fraction estimators on the first differences of the data, when testing for a unit root in the presence of trend breaks and/or non-stationary volatility. Methods to select between the break and no break cases, using standard information criteria and feasible weighted information criteria based on our adaptive volatility estimator, are also discussed. Simulation evidence suggests that unit root tests based on these weighted quantities can display significantly improved finite sample behaviour under heteroskedasticity relative to their unweighted counterparts. An empirical illustration to U.S. and U.K. real GDP is also considered.

Swiss Franc from the Croatian Perspective

Abstract In Croatia and other countries of Central and Eastern Europe, as a consequence of deep financial integration and abolition of capital controls, considerable loans to households indexed to the Swiss franc have emerged. Although all of researchers of the Swiss franc do not agree entirely on whether the Swiss franc is a safe haven currency, its property of continuous appreciation is commonly accepted. There was a continuous appreciation of the Swiss franc over the Croatian kuna. This paper examines the performance of several ARCH-based models for Swiss franc against the Croatian kuna on daily data sets within time period from 1997 to 2010. Evaluating the models through standard information criteria Component ARCH (1,1) is found to be the best-fitting model.

Selecting the Number of States in Hidden Markov Models: Pragmatic Solutions Illustrated Using Animal Movement

We discuss the notorious problem of order selection in hidden Markov models, that is of selecting an adequate number of states, highlighting typical pitfalls and practical challenges arising when analyzing real data. Extensive simulations are used to demonstrate the reasons that render order selection particularly challenging in practice despite the conceptual simplicity of the task. In particular, we demonstrate why well-established formal procedures for model selection, such as those based on standard information criteria, tend to favor models with numbers of states that are undesirably large in situations where states shall be meaningful entities. We also offer a pragmatic step-by-step approach together with comprehensive advice for how practitioners can implement order selection. Our proposed strategy is illustrated with a real-data case study on muskox movement. Supplementary materials accompanying this paper appear online.

One-Step Estimator Paths for Concave Regularization

ABSTRACTThe statistics literature of the past 15 years has established many favorable properties for sparse diminishing-bias regularization: techniques that can roughly be understood as providing estimation under penalty functions spanning the range of concavity between ℓ0 and ℓ1 norms. However, lasso ℓ1-regularized estimation remains the standard tool for industrial Big Data applications because of its minimal computational cost and the presence of easy-to-apply rules for penalty selection. In response, this article proposes a simple new algorithm framework that requires no more computation than a lasso path: the path of one-step estimators (POSE) does ℓ1 penalized regression estimation on a grid of decreasing penalties, but adapts coefficient-specific weights to decrease as a function of the coefficient estimated in the previous path step. This provides sparse diminishing-bias regularization at no extra cost over the fastest lasso algorithms. Moreover, our gamma lasso implementation of POSE is accompanied by a reliable heuristic for the fit degrees of freedom, so that standard information criteria can be applied in penalty selection. We also provide novel results on the distance between weighted-ℓ1 and ℓ0 penalized predictors; this allows us to build intuition about POSE and other diminishing-bias regularization schemes. The methods and results are illustrated in extensive simulations and in application of logistic regression to evaluating the performance of hockey players. Supplementary materials for this article are available online.

Stochastic complexity-based model selection with false alarm rate control in optical spectroscopy

Stochastic complexity-based penalization criteria can prove efficient and robust in spectroscopy applications for unsupervised identification and concentration estimation of spectrally interfering chemical components. It is shown here how the so-called Normalized Maximized Likelihood (nMDL) introduced in [17] can be tailored to provide control of the detection performances in terms of probability of false alarm. Numerical experiments conducted on realistic simulated optical spectroscopy signals evidence that the nMDL approach outperforms standard information criteria in terms of model selection performances. Moreover, the ability to control false alarm rates with the proposed modified nMDL criterion is demonstrated on simulations.

Modified Schwarz and Hannan–Quinn information criteria for weak VARMA models

Numerous multivariate time series admit weak vector autoregressive moving-average (VARMA) representations, in which the errors are uncorrelated but not necessarily independent nor martingale differences. These models are called weak VARMA by opposition to the standard VARMA models, also called strong VARMA models, in which the error terms are supposed to be independent and identically distributed (iid). This article considers the problem of order selection of the weak VARMA models by using the information criteria. It is shown that the use of the standard information criteria are often not justified when the iid assumption on the noise is relaxed. As a consequence, we propose the modified versions of the Schwarz or Bayesian information criterion and of the Hannan and Quinn criterion for identifying the orders of weak VARMA models. Monte Carlo experiments show that the proposed modified criteria estimate the model orders more accurately than the standard ones. An illustrative application using the squared daily returns of financial series is presented.

Model selection in the presence of incidental parameters

This paper considers model selection in panels where incidental parameters are present. Primary interest centers on selecting a model that best approximates the underlying structure involving parameters that are common within the panel. It is well known that conventional model selection procedures are often inconsistent in panel models and this can be so even without nuisance parameters. Modifications are then needed to achieve consistency. New model selection information criteria are developed here that use either the Kullback–Leibler information criterion based on the profile likelihood or the Bayes factor based on the integrated likelihood with a bias-reducing prior. These model selection criteria impose heavier penalties than those associated with standard information criteria such as AIC and BIC. The additional penalty, which is data-dependent, properly reflects the model complexity arising from the presence of incidental parameters. A particular example is studied in detail involving lag order selection in dynamic panel models with fixed effects. The new criteria are shown to control for over/under-selection probabilities in these models and lead to consistent order selection criteria.

Lag length specification in Engle-Granger cointegration test: a modified Koyck mean lag approach based on partial correlation

The Engle-Granger cointegration test is highly sensitive to the choice of lag length and the poor performance of conventional lag selection criteria such as standard information criteria in selecting appropriate optimal lag length for the implementation of the Engle-Granger cointegration test is well-established in the statistical literature. Testing for cointegration within the framework of the residual-based Engle-Granger cointegration methodology is the same as testing for the stationarity of the residual series via the augmented Dickey-Fuller test which is well known to be sensitive to the choice of lag length. Given an array of candidate optimal lag lengths that may be suggested by different standard information criteria, the applied researchers are faced with the problem of deciding the best optimal lag among the candidate optimal lag lengths suggested by different standard information criteria, which are often either underestimated or overestimated. In an attempt to address this well-known major pitfall of standard information criteria, this paper introduces a new lag selection criterion called a modified Koyck mean lag approach based on partial correlation criterion for the selection of optimal lag length for the residual-based Engle-Granger cointegration test. Based on empirical findings, it was observed that in some instances over-specification of lag length can bias the Engle-Granger cointegration test towards the rejection of a true cointegration relationship and non-rejection of a spurious cointegration relationship. Using real-life data, we present an empirical illustration which demonstrates that our proposed criterion outperformed the standard information criteria in selecting appropriate optimal truncation lag for the implementation of the Engle-Granger cointegration test using both augmented Dickey-Fuller and generalized least squares Dickey-Fuller tests.

Modified information criteria and selection of long memory time series models

The problem of model selection of a univariate long memory time series is investigated once a semi parametric estimator for the long memory parameter has been used. Standard information criteria are not consistent in this case. A Modified Information Criterion (MIC) that overcomes these difficulties is introduced and proofs that show its asymptotic validity are provided. The results are general and cover a wide range of short memory processes. Simulation evidence compares the new and existing methodologies and empirical applications in monthly inflation and daily realized volatility are presented.

A predictive deviance criterion for selecting a generative model in semi-supervised classification

Semi-supervised classification can help to improve generative classifiers by taking into account the information provided by the unlabeled data points, especially when there are far more unlabeled data than labeled data. The aim is to select a generative classification model using both unlabeled and labeled data. A predictive deviance criterion, AICcond, aiming to select a parsimonious and relevant generative classifier in the semi-supervised context is proposed. In contrast to standard information criteria such as AIC and BIC, AICcond is focused on the classification task, since it attempts to measure the predictive power of a generative model by approximating its predictive deviance. However, it avoids the computational cost of cross-validation criteria, which make repeated use of the EM algorithm. AICcond is proved to have consistency properties that ensure its parsimony when compared with the Bayesian Entropy Criterion (BEC), whose focus is similar to that of AICcond. Numerical experiments on both simulated and real data sets show that the behavior of AICcond as regards the selection of variables and models, is encouraging when it is compared to the competing criteria.

Model Selection in the Presence of Incidental Parameters

This paper considers model selection in nonlinear panel data models where incidental parameters or large-dimensional nuisance parameters are present. Primary interest typically centres on selecting a model that best approximates the underlying structure involving parameters that are common within the panel after concentrating out the incidental parameters. It is well known that conventional model selection procedures are often inconsistent in panel models and this can be so even without nuisance parameters (Han et al, 2012). Modifications are then needed to achieve consistency. New model selection information criteria are developed here that use either the Kullback-Leibler information criterion based on the profile likelihood or the Bayes factor based on the integrated likelihood with the robust prior of Arellano and Bonhomme (2009). These model selection criteria impose heavier penalties than those associated with standard information criteria such as AIC and BIC. The additional penalty, which is data-dependent, properly reflects the model complexity arising from the presence of incidental parameters. A particular example is studied in detail involving lag order selection in dynamic panel models with fixed individual effects. The new criteria are shown to control for over/under-selection probabilities in these models and lead to consistent order selection criteria.

A New Criterion for Lag-Length Selection in Unit Root Tests

This paper examines lag selection problem in unit root tests which has become a major specification problem in empirical analysis of non-stationary time series data. It is known that the implementation of unit root tests requires the choice of optimal truncation lag for good power proper ties and it is equally unrealistic to assume that the true optimal truncation lag is known a prior to the practitioners and other applied researchers. Consequently, these users rely largely on the use of standard information criteria for selection of truncation lag in unit root tests. A number of previous studies have shown that these criteria have problem of over-specification of truncation lag-length leading to the well-known low power problem that is commonly associated with most unit root tests in the literature. This paper focuses on the problem of over-specification of truncation lag-length within the context of augmented Dickey-Fuller (ADF) and generalized least squares Dickey-Fuller (DF-GLS)unit root tests. In an attempt to address this lag selection problem, we propose a new criterion for the selection of truncation lag in unit root tests based on Koyck distributed lag model and we show that this new criterion avoids the problem of over-specification of truncationlag-length that is commonly associated with standard information criteria.

Cointegrating rank selection in models with time-varying variance

Reduced rank regression (RRR) models with time varying heterogeneity are considered. Standard information criteria for selecting cointegrating rank are shown to be weakly consistent in semiparametric RRR models in which the errors have general nonparametric short memory components and shifting volatility provided the penalty coefficient Cn→∞ and Cn/n→0 as n→∞. The AIC criterion is inconsistent and its limit distribution is given. The results extend those in Cheng and Phillips (2009a) and are useful in empirical work where structural breaks or time evolution in the error variances is present. An empirical application to exchange rate data is provided.

Model Selection Criteria for Factor-Augmented Regressions

In a factor-augmented regression, the forecast of a variable depends on a few factors estimated from a large number of predictors. But how does one determine the appropriate number of factors relevant for such a regression? Existing work has focused on criteria that can consistently estimate the appropriate number of factors in a large-dimensional panel of explanatory variables. However, not all of these factors are necessarily relevant for modeling a specific dependent variable within a factor-augmented regression. This paper develops a number of theoretical conditions that selection criteria must fulfill in order to provide a consistent estimate of the factor dimension relevant for a factor-augmented regression. Our framework takes into account factor estimation error and does not depend on a specific factor estimation methodology. It also provides, as a by-product, a template for developing selection criteria for regressions that include standard generated regressors. The conditions make it clear that standard model selection criteria do not provide a consistent estimate of the factor dimension in a factor-augmented regression. We propose alternative criteria that do fulfill our conditions. These criteria essentially modify standard information criteria so that the corresponding penalty function for dimensionality also penalizes factor estimation error. We show through Monte Carlo and empirical applications that these modified information criteria are useful in determining the appropriate dimensions of factor-augmented regressions.