Single-index Varying-coefficient Model Research Articles

Estimation for a partially linear single-index varying-coefficient model

In this paper, we study the estimation for the partial linear single-index varying-coefficient model, which is a natural extension of the partially linear varying-coefficient model. A stepwise estimation procedure is developed to obtain asymptotic normality estimators of the index parameter vector, the coefficient parameter vector, and the coefficient function vector. The asymptotic properties of the resulting estimators are established under some conditions. A simulation study is conducted to assess the performance of the stepwise estimation procedure and the results show that our proposed procedure performs well in finite samples. Furthermore, a real data example is also used to illustrate our proposed method.

Feature Screening for Ultrahigh-dimensional Censored Data with Varying Coefficient Single-index Model

In this paper, we study the sure independence screening of ultrahigh-dimensional censored data with varying coefficient single-index model. This general model framework covers a large number of commonly used survival models. The property that the proposed method is not derived for a specific model is appealing in ultrahigh dimensional regressions, as it is difficult to specify a correct model for ultrahigh dimensional predictors. Once the assuming data generating process does not meet the actual one, the screening method based on the model will be problematic. We establish the sure screening property and consistency in ranking property of the proposed method. Simulations are conducted to study the finite sample performances, and the results demonstrate that the proposed method is competitive compared with the existing methods. We also illustrate the results via the analysis of data from The National Alzheimers Coordinating Center (NACC).

Empirical likelihood confidence regions of the parameters in a partially single-index varying-coefficient model

Abstract In this paper, we investigate a partially single-index varying-coefficient model, and suggest two empirical log-likelihood ratio statistics for the unknown parameters in the model. The first statistic is asymptotically distributed as a weighted sum of independent chi-square variables under some mild conditions. It is proved that another statistic, with adjustment factor, is asymptotically standard chi-square under some suitable conditions. These useful statistics could be used to construct the confidence regions of the parameters. A simulation study indicates that, with the increase of sample size, the coverage probability of the confidence region constructed by us gradually approaches the theoretical value.

A Functional Varying-Coefficient Single-Index Model for Functional Response Data

Motivated by the analysis of imaging data, we propose a novel functional varying-coefficient single-index model (FVCSIM) to carry out the regression analysis of functional response data on a set of covariates of interest. FVCSIM represents a new extension of varying-coefficient single-index models for scalar responses collected from cross-sectional and longitudinal studies. An efficient estimation procedure is developed to iteratively estimate varying coefficient functions, link functions, index parameter vectors, and the covariance function of individual functions. We systematically examine the asymptotic properties of all estimators including the weak convergence of the estimated varying coefficient functions, the asymptotic distribution of the estimated index parameter vectors, and the uniform convergence rate of the estimated covariance function and their spectrum. Simulation studies are carried out to assess the finite-sample performance of the proposed procedure. We apply FVCSIM to investigate the development of white matter diffusivities along the corpus callosum skeleton obtained from Alzheimer’s Disease Neuroimaging Initiative (ADNI) study. Supplementary material for this article is available online.

Quantile regression and variable selection for single-index varying-coefficient models

ABSTRACTIn this article, a new efficient iteration procedure based on quantile regression is developed for single-index varying-coefficient models. The proposed estimation scheme is an extension of the full iteration procedure proposed by Carroll et al., which is different with the method adopted by Wu et al. for single-index models that a double-weighted summation is used therein. This distinguish not only be the reason that undersmoothing should be a necessary condition in our proposed procedure, but also may reduce the computational burden especially for large-sample size. The resulting estimators are shown to be robust with regardless of outliers as well as varying errors. Moreover, to achieve sparsity when there exist irrelevant variables in the index parameters, a variable selection procedure combined with adaptive LASSO penalty is developed to simultaneously select and estimate significant parameters. Theoretical properties of the obtained estimators are established under some regular conditions, and some simulation studies with various distributed errors are conducted to assess the finite sample performance of our proposed method.

A Functional Varying-Coefficient Single-Index Model for Functional Response Data

A Functional Varying-Coefficient Single-Index Model for Functional Response Data

Robust modal estimation and variable selection for single-index varying-coefficient models

ABSTRACTIn this article, we present a new efficient iteration estimation approach based on local modal regression for single-index varying-coefficient models. The resulted estimators are shown to be robust with regardless of outliers and error distributions. The asymptotic properties of the estimators are established under some regularity conditions and a practical modified EM algorithm is proposed for the new method. Moreover, to achieve sparse estimator when there exists irrelevant variables in the index parameters, a variable selection procedure based on SCAD penalty is developed to select significant parametric covariates and the well-known oracle properties are also derived. Finally, some numerical examples with various distributed errors and a real data analysis are conducted to illustrate the validity and feasibility of our proposed method.

Robust exponential squared loss-based variable selection for high-dimensional single-index varying-coefficient model

Robust variable selection procedure through penalized regression has been gaining increased attention in the literature. They can be used to perform variable selection and are expected to yield robust estimates. In this article, we propose a robust variable selection procedure for high-dimensional single-index varying-coefficient model using penalized exponential squared loss. The proposed procedure simultaneously selects significant covariates with functional coefficients and local significant variables with parametric coefficients. With proper choices of penalty functions and regularization parameters, we show the asymptotic normality of the resulting estimate and further demonstrate that the proposed procedures perform as well as an oracle procedure. Our simulation studies reveal that our proposed method performs similarly to the oracle method in terms of the model error and the positive selection rate even in the presence of influential points. In contrast, other existing procedures have a much lower noncausal selection rate. Our analysis unravels the discrepancies of using our robust method versus the other penalized regression method, underscoring the importance of developing and applying robust penalized regression methods.

Robust estimation and variable selection for varying-coefficient single-index models based on modal regression

ABSTRACTIn this paper, we propose a new efficient and robust penalized estimating procedure for varying-coefficient single-index models based on modal regression and basis function approximations. The proposed procedure simultaneously solves two types of problems: separation of varying and constant effects and selection of variables with non zero coefficients for both non parametric and index components using three smoothly clipped absolute deviation (SCAD) penalties. With appropriate selection of the tuning parameters, the new method possesses the consistency in variable selection and the separation of varying and constant coefficients. In addition, the estimators of varying coefficients possess the optimal convergence rate and the estimators of constant coefficients and index parameters have the oracle property. Finally, we investigate the finite sample performance of the proposed method through a simulation study and real data analysis.

Semiparametric estimation of the single-index varying-coefficient model

ABSTRACTIn this paper, we consider the choice of pilot estimators for the single-index varying-coefficient model, which may result in radically different estimators, and develop the method for estimating the unknown parameter in this model. To estimate the unknown parameters efficiently, we use the outer product of gradient method to find the consistent initial estimators for interest parameters, and then adopt the refined estimation method to improve the efficiency, which is similar to the refined minimum average variance estimation method. An algorithm is proposed to estimate the model directly. Asymptotic properties for the proposed estimation procedure have been established. The bandwidth selection problem is also considered. Simulation studies are carried out to assess the finite sample performance of the proposed estimators, and efficiency comparisons between the estimation methods are made.

Composite quantile regression for varying-coefficient single-index models

ABSTRACTThe varying-coefficient single-index model (VCSIM) is a very general and flexible tool for exploring the relationship between a response variable and a set of predictors. Popular special cases include single-index models and varying-coefficient models. In order to estimate the index-coefficient and the non parametric varying-coefficients in the VCSIM, we propose a two-stage composite quantile regression estimation procedure, which integrates the local linear smoothing method and the information of quantile regressions at a number of conditional quantiles of the response variable. We establish the asymptotic properties of the proposed estimators for the index-coefficient and varying-coefficients when the error is heterogeneous. When compared with the existing mean-regression-based estimation method, our simulation results indicate that our proposed method has comparable performance for normal error and is more robust for error with outliers or heavy tail. We illustrate our methodologies with a real example.

Robust check loss-based variable selection of high-dimensional single-index varying-coefficient model

Single-index varying-coefficient model is an important mathematical modeling method to model nonlinear phenomena in science and engineering. In this paper, we develop a variable selection method for high-dimensional single-index varying-coefficient models using a shrinkage idea. The proposed procedure can simultaneously select significant nonparametric components and parametric components. Under defined regularity conditions, with appropriate selection of tuning parameters, the consistency of the variable selection procedure and the oracle property of the estimators are established. Moreover, due to the robustness of the check loss function to outliers in the finite samples, our proposed variable selection method is more robust than the ones based on the least squares criterion. Finally, the method is illustrated with numerical simulations.

Empirical likelihood-based serial correlation testing in partially varying coefficient single-index models

ABSTRACTPartially varying coefficient single-index models (PVCSIM) are a class of semiparametric regression models. One important assumption is that the model error is independently and identically distributed, which may contradict with the reality in many applications. For example, in the economical and financial applications, the observations may be serially correlated over time. Based on the empirical likelihood technique, we propose a procedure for testing the serial correlation of random error in PVCSIM. Under some regular conditions, we show that the proposed empirical likelihood ratio statistic asymptotically follows a standard χ2 distribution. We also present some numerical studies to illustrate the performance of our proposed testing procedure.

Model detection and estimation for single-index varying coefficient model

Single-index varying coefficient model (SIVCM) is a powerful tool for modeling nonlinearity in multivariate estimation, and has been widely used in the literature due to the fact that it can overcome the well-known phenomenon of “curse-of-dimensionality”. In this paper, we consider the problem of model detection and estimation for SIVCM. Based on the proposed combined penalization procedure, we can identify the true model structure consistently, and obtain a new semiparametric model—partially linear single-index varying coefficient model (PLSIVCM). Under the appropriate conditions, we demonstrate that the proposed penalized estimators of parametric and nonparametric components of PLSIVCM are consistent, but their asymptotic distributions are not available. Hence, we extend the minimum average variance estimation method to PLSIVCM, and establish the asymptotic normality for the refined estimators of index parameters, constant coefficients and varying coefficient functions, respectively. The finite sample performances of the proposed methods are illustrated by a Monte Carlo simulation study and the real data analysis.

Nonparametric estimation of varying-coefficient single-index models

The varying-coefficient single-index model has two distinguishing features: partially linear varying-coefficient functions and a single-index structure. This paper proposes a nonparametric method based on smoothing splines for estimating varying-coefficient functions and an unknown link function. Moreover, the average derivative estimation method is applied to obtain the single-index parameter estimates. For interval inference, Bayesian confidence intervals were obtained based on Bayes models for varying-coefficient functions and the link function. The performance of the proposed method is examined both through simulations and by applying it to Boston housing data.

A robust and efficient estimation method for single-index varying-coefficient models

A new estimation procedure based on modal regression is proposed for single-index varying-coefficient models. The proposed method achieves better robustness and efficiency than that of Xue and Pang (2013). We establish the asymptotic normalities of proposed estimators and evaluate the performance of the proposed method by a numerical simulation.

Robust variable selection in partially varying coefficient single-index model

By combining basis function approximations and smoothly clipped absolute deviation (SCAD) penalty, this paper proposes a robust variable selection procedure for a partially varying coefficient single-index model based on modal regression. The proposed procedure simultaneously selects significant variables in the parametric components and the nonparametric components. With appropriate selection of the tuning parameters, we establish the theoretical properties of our procedure, including consistency in variable selection and the oracle property in estimation. Furthermore, we also discuss the bandwidth selection and propose a modified expectation–maximization (EM)-type algorithm for the proposed estimation procedure. The finite sample properties of the proposed estimators are illustrated by some simulation examples.

Generalized varying-coefficient single-index model

In this paper, the generalized varying-coefficient single-index model is discussed based on penalized likelihood. All the unknown functions are fitted by penalized spline. The estimates of the unknown parameters and the unknown coefficient functions are obtained and the estimation approach is rapid and computationally stable. Under some mild conditions, the consistency and the asymptotic normality of these resulting estimators are given. Two simulation studies are carried out to illustrate the performance of the estimates. An application of the model to the Hong Kong environmental data further demonstrates the potential of the proposed modelling procedures.

Variable selection for partially varying coefficient single-index model

In this paper, we consider the problem of variable selection for partially varying coefficient single-index model, and present a regularized variable selection procedure by combining basis function approximations with smoothly clipped absolute deviation penalty. The proposed procedure simultaneously selects significant variables in the single-index parametric components and the nonparametric coefficient function components. With appropriate selection of the tuning parameters, the consistency of the variable selection procedure and the oracle property of the estimators are established. Finite sample performance of the proposed method is illustrated by a simulation study and real data analysis.

Variable selection for single-index varying-coefficient model

We consider the problem of variable selection for single-index varying-coefficient model, and present a regularized variable selection procedure by combining basis function approximations with SCAD penalty. The proposed procedure simultaneously selects significant covariates with functional coefficients and local significant variables with parametric coefficients. With appropriate selection of the tuning parameters, the consistency of the variable selection procedure and the oracle property of the estimators are established. The proposed method can naturally be applied to deal with pure single-index model and varying-coefficient model. Finite sample performances of the proposed method are illustrated by a simulation study and the real data analysis.