Empirical Likelihood for Partially Linear Models

In this paper, block empirical likelihood inference for partially linear errors-in-variables models with longitudinal data are investigated. We apply the block empirical likelihood procedure to accommodate the within- group correlation of the longitudinal data. The block empirical log-likelihood ratio statistic for the parametric components, which are of primary interest, is suggested. And the nonparametric version of the Wilk's theorem is derived under mild conditions. Thus, the empirical likelihood confidence region with asymptotically correct coverage probabilities for parametric components can be constructed. Simulations are carried out to access the performance of the proposed approach.

In this paper, we consider how to yield a robust empirical likelihood estimation for regression models. After introducing modal regression, we propose a novel empirical likelihood method based on modal regression estimation equations, which has the merits of both robustness and high inference efficiency compared with the least square based methods. Under some mild conditions, we show that Wilks’ theorem of the proposed empirical likelihood approach continues to hold. Advantages of empirical likelihood modal regression as a nonparametric approach are illustrated by constructing confidence intervals/regions. Two simulation studies and a real data analysis confirm our theoretical findings.

This article studies the empirical likelihood method for long‐memory time series models. By virtue of the Whittle likelihood, one obtains a score function that can be viewed as an estimating equation of the parameters of a fractional integrated autoregressive moving average (ARFIMA) model. This score function is used to obtain an empirical likelihood ratio which is shown to be asymptotically chi‐square distributed. Confidence regions for the parameters are constructed based on the asymptotic distribution of the empirical likelihood ratio. Bartlett correction and finite sample properties of the empirical likelihood confidence regions are examined.

By introducing the notion of “empirical likelihood function of observing sums”, unequally-spaced time series data and longitudinal data generated from Levy processes can be analyzed. Characteristic function is further incorporated to handle the situations where the density function of the increments is difficult to obtain. In the situations where both characteristic function and the density function are available, it is shown through the simulation examples that the proposed empirical maximum likelihood method does not suffer from significant information loss comparing to the maximum likelihood estimation method. The performances of the proposed method is tested for both equally-spaced and unequally-spaced observations.

Motivated by applications to goodness of fit testing, the empirical likelihood approach is generalized to allow for the number of constraints to grow with the sample size and for the constraints to use estimated criteria functions. The latter is needed to deal with nuisance parameters. The proposed empirical likelihood based goodness of fit tests are asymptotically distribution free. For univariate observations, tests for a specified distribution, for a distribution of parametric form, and for a symmetric distribution are presented. For bivariate observations, tests for independence are developed.

This paper develops an empirical likelihood approach for regular generalized autoregressive conditional heteroskedasticity (GARCH) models and GARCH models with unit roots. For regular GARCH models, it is shown that the log empirical likelihood ratio statistic asymptotically follows a χ2 distribution. For GARCH models with unit roots, two versions of the empirical likelihood methods, the least squares score and the maximum likelihood score functions, are considered. For both cases, the limiting distributions of the log empirical likelihood ratio statistics are established. These two statistics can be used to test for unit roots under the GARCH framework. Finite-sample performances are assessed through simulations for GARCH models with unit roots.This research was supported in part by Hong Kong Research grants Council Grants CUHK4043/02P and HKUST6273/03H. The authors thank two referees and the Co-Editor, Bruce Hansen, for insightful and helpful comments about the relationship between QMLE and MELE, which led to substantial improvement of the presentation. Computational assistance from Jerry Wong and Chun-Yip Yau is also gratefully acknowledged.

The linear regression model for right censored data, also known as the accelerated failure time model using the logarithm of survival time as the response variable, is a useful alternative to the Cox proportional hazards model. Empirical likelihood as a nonparametric approach has been demonstrated to have many desirable merits thanks to its robustness against model misspecification. However, the linear regression model with right censored data cannot directly benefit from the empirical likelihood for inferences mainly due to dependent elements in estimating equations of the conventional approach. In this paper, we propose an empirical likelihood approach with a new estimating equation for linear regression with right censored data. A nested coordinate algorithm with majorization is used for solving the optimization problems with nondifferentiable objective function. We show that the Wilks theorem holds for the new empirical likelihood. We also consider the variable selection problem with empirical likelihood when the number of predictors can be large. Since the new estimating equation is nondifferentiable, a quadratic approximation is applied to study the asymptotic properties of penalized empirical likelihood. We prove the oracle properties and evaluate the properties with simulated data. We apply our method to a SEER small intestine cancer dataset.

Empirical likelihood for single-index models

In this paper, the authors consider the empirical likelihood method for a first-order generalized random coefficient integer-valued autoregressive process. The authors establish the log empirical likelihood ratio statistic and obtain its limiting distribution. Furthermore, the authors investigate the point estimation, confidence regions and hypothesis testing for the parameters of interest. The performance of empirical likelihood method is illustrated by a simulation study and a real data example.

This article develops empirical likelihood methodology for a class of long range dependent processes driven by a stationary Gaussian process. We consider population parameters that are defined by estimating equations in the time domain. It is shown that the standard block empirical likelihood (BEL) method, with a suitable scaling, has a non‐standard limit distribution based on a multiple Wiener–Itô integral. Unlike the short memory time series case, the scaling constant involves unknown population quantities that may be difficult to estimate. Alternative versions of the empirical likelihood method, involving the expansive BEL (EBEL) methods are considered. It is shown that the EBEL renditions do not require an explicit scaling and, therefore, remove this undesirable feature of the standard BEL. However, the limit law involves the long memory parameter, which may be estimated from the data. Results from a moderately large simulation study on finite sample properties of tests and confidence intervals based on different empirical likelihood methods are also reported.

In this paper, we not only construct the confidence region for parameters in a mixed integer-valued autoregressive process using the empirical likelihood method, but also establish the empirical log-likelihood ratio statistic and obtain its limiting distribution. And then, via simulation studies we give coverage probabilities for the parameters of interest. The results show that the empirical likelihood method performs very well.

Empirical likelihood based inference for semiparametric varying coefficient partially linear models with error-prone linear covariates

Empirical likelihood based on synthetic right censored data

Pretest–posttest studies are an important and popular method for assessing the effectiveness of a treatment or an intervention in many scientific fields. While the treatment effect, measured as the difference between the two mean responses, is of primary interest, testing the difference of the two distribution functions for the treatment and the control groups is also an important problem. The Mann–Whitney test has been a standard tool for testing the difference of distribution functions with two independent samples. We develop empirical likelihood-based (EL) methods for the Mann–Whitney test to incorporate the two unique features of pretest–posttest studies: (i) the availability of baseline information for both groups; and (ii) the structure of the data with missing by design. Our proposed methods combine the standard Mann–Whitney test with the EL method of Huang, Qin and Follmann [(2008), ‘Empirical Likelihood-Based Estimation of the Treatment Effect in a Pretest–Posttest Study’, Journal of the American Statistical Association, 103(483), 1270–1280], the imputation-based empirical likelihood method of Chen, Wu and Thompson [(2015), ‘An Imputation-Based Empirical Likelihood Approach to Pretest–Posttest Studies’, The Canadian Journal of Statistics accepted for publication], and the jackknife empirical likelihood method of Jing, Yuan and Zhou [(2009), ‘Jackknife Empirical Likelihood’, Journal of the American Statistical Association, 104, 1224–1232]. Theoretical results are presented and finite sample performances of proposed methods are evaluated through simulation studies.

Summary This paper is concerned with empirical likelihood inference on the population mean when the dimension $p$ and the sample size $n$ satisfy $p/n\rightarrow c\in [1,\infty)$. As shown in Tsao (2004), the empirical likelihood method fails with high probability when $p/n>1/2$ because the convex hull of the $n$ observations in $\mathbb{R}^p$ becomes too small to cover the true mean value. Moreover, when $p> n$, the sample covariance matrix becomes singular, and this results in the breakdown of the first sandwich approximation for the log empirical likelihood ratio. To deal with these two challenges, we propose a new strategy of adding two artificial data points to the observed data. We establish the asymptotic normality of the proposed empirical likelihood ratio test. The proposed test statistic does not involve the inverse of the sample covariance matrix. Furthermore, its form is explicit, so the test can easily be carried out with low computational cost. Our numerical comparison shows that the proposed test outperforms some existing tests for high-dimensional mean vectors in terms of power. We also illustrate the proposed procedure with an empirical analysis of stock data.