We introduce a simple method for nearly simultaneous computation of all moments needed for quasi maximum likelihood estimation of parameters in discretely observed stochastic differential equations commonly seen in finance. The method proposed in this papers is not restricted to any particular dynamics of the differential equation and is virtually insensitive to the sampling interval. The key contribution of the paper is that computational complexity is sublinear in the number of observations as we compute all moments through a single operation. Furthermore, that operation can be done offline. The simulations show that the method is unbiased for all practical purposes for any sampling design, including random sampling, and that the computational cost is comparable (actually faster for moderate and large data sets) to the simple, often severely biased, Euler-Maruyama approximation.
This paper introduces a Monte Carlo method for maximum likelihood inference in the context of discretely observed diffusion processes. The method gives unbiased and a.s.\@ continuous estimators of the likelihood function for a family of diffusion models and its performance in numerical examples is computationally efficient. It uses a recently developed technique for the exact simulation of diffusions, and involves no discretization error. We show that, under regularity conditions, the Monte Carlo MLE converges a.s. to the true MLE. For datasize $n\to\infty$, we show that the number of Monte Ca…
Birth-and-death processes are widely used to model the development of biological populations. Although they are relatively simple models, their parameters can be challenging to estimate, because the likelihood can become numerically unstable when data arise from the most common sampling schemes, such as annual population censuses. Simple estimators may be based on an embedded Galton-Watson process, but this presupposes that the observation times are equi-spaced. We estimate the birth, death, and growth rates of a linear birth-and-death process whose population size is periodically observed via…
We consider parametric hypotheses testing for multidimensional ergodic diffusion processes observed at discrete time. We propose a family of test statistics, related to the so called $ϕ$-divergence measures. By taking into account the quasi-likelihood approach developed for studying the stochastic differential equations, it is proved that the tests in this family are all asymptotically distribution free. In other words, our test statistics weakly converge to the chi squared distribution. Furthermore, our test statistic is compared with the quasi likelihood ratio test. In the case of contiguous…
Parameter estimation in diffusion processes from discrete observations up to a first-hitting time is clearly of practical relevance, but does not seem to have been studied so far. In neuroscience, many models for the membrane potential evolution involve the presence of an upper threshold. Data are modeled as discretely observed diffusions which are killed when the threshold is reached. Statistical inference is often based on the misspecified likelihood ignoring the presence of the threshold causing severe bias, e.g. the bias incurred in the drift parameters of the Ornstein-Uhlenbeck model for …
The aim of this paper is to study the asymptotic properties of the maximum likelihood estimator (MLE) of the drift coefficient for fractional stochastic heat equation driven by an additive space-time noise. We consider the traditional for stochastic partial differential equations statistical experiment when the measurements are performed in the spectral domain, and in contrast to the existing literature, we study the asymptotic properties of the maximum likelihood (type) estimators (MLE) when both, the number of Fourier modes and the time go to infinity. In the first part of the paper we consi…
Many important stochastic counting models can be written as general birth-death processes (BDPs). BDPs are continuous-time Markov chains on the non-negative integers and can be used to easily parameterize a rich variety of probability distributions. Although the theoretical properties of general BDPs are well understood, traditionally statistical work on BDPs has been limited to the simple linear (Kendall) process, which arises in ecology and evolutionary applications. Aside from a few simple cases, it remains impossible to find analytic expressions for the likelihood of a discretely-observed …
With a view to statistical inference for discretely observed diffusion models, we propose simple methods of simulating diffusion bridges, approximately and exactly. Diffusion bridge simulation plays a fundamental role in likelihood and Bayesian inference for diffusion processes. First a simple method of simulating approximate diffusion bridges is proposed and studied. Then these approximate bridges are used as proposal for an easily implemented Metropolis-Hastings algorithm that produces exact diffusion bridges. The new method utilizes time-reversibility properties of one-dimensional diffusion…
Stochastic compartmental models are important tools for understanding the course of infectious diseases epidemics in populations and in prospective evaluation of intervention policies. However, calculating the likelihood for discretely observed data from even simple models -- such as the ubiquitous susceptible-infectious-removed (SIR) model -- has been considered computationally intractable, since its formulation almost a century ago. Recently researchers have proposed methods to circumvent this limitation through data augmentation or approximation, but these approaches often suffer from high …
We consider quasi maximum likelihood (QML) estimation for general non-Gaussian discrete-ime linear state space models and equidistantly observed multivariate Lévy-driven continuoustime autoregressive moving average (MCARMA) processes. In the discrete-time setting, we prove strong consistency and asymptotic normality of the QML estimator under standard moment assumptions and a strong-mixing condition on the output process of the state space model. In the second part of the paper, we investigate probabilistic and analytical properties of equidistantly sampled continuous-time state space models a…
This paper proposes a widely applicable method of approximate maximum-likelihood estimation for multivariate diffusion process from discretely sampled data. A closed-form asymptotic expansion for transition density is proposed and accompanied by an algorithm containing only basic and explicit calculations for delivering any arbitrary order of the expansion. The likelihood function is thus approximated explicitly and employed in statistical estimation. The performance of our method is demonstrated by Monte Carlo simulations from implementing several examples, which represent a wide range of com…
The transition density of a diffusion process does not admit an explicit expression in general, which prevents the full maximum likelihood estimation (MLE) based on discretely observed sample paths. A\"ıt-Sahalia [J. Finance 54 (1999) 1361--1395; Econometrica 70 (2002) 223--262] proposed asymptotic expansions to the transition densities of diffusion processes, which lead to an approximate maximum likelihood estimation (AMLE) for parameters. Built on A\"ıt-Sahalia's [Econometrica 70 (2002) 223--262; Ann. Statist. 36 (2008) 906--937] proposal and analysis on the AMLE, we establish the consistenc…
Strong consistency of the quasi-maximum likelihood estimator is given for a general class of multidimensional causal processes based on asyMmetric laplacian innovation.
We consider nonsynchronous sampling of parameterized stochastic regression models, which contain stochastic differential equations. Constructing a quasi-likelihood function, we prove that the quasi-maximum likelihood estimator and the Bayes type estimator are consistent and asymptotically mixed normal when the sampling frequency of the nonsynchronous data becomes large.
This paper investigates the Gaussian quasi-likelihood estimation of an exponentially ergodic multidimensional Markov process, which is expressed as a solution to a Lévy driven stochastic differential equation whose coefficients are known except for the finite-dimensional parameters to be estimated, where the diffusion coefficient may be degenerate or even null. We suppose that the process is discretely observed under the rapidly increasing experimental design with step size $h_n$. By means of the polynomial-type large deviation inequality, convergence of the corresponding statistical random fi…
Nonuniform subsampling methods are effective to reduce computational burden and maintain estimation efficiency for massive data. Existing methods mostly focus on subsampling with replacement due to its high computational efficiency. If the data volume is so large that nonuniform subsampling probabilities cannot be calculated all at once, then subsampling with replacement is infeasible to implement. This paper solves this problem using Poisson subsampling. We first derive optimal Poisson subsampling probabilities in the context of quasi-likelihood estimation under the A- and L-optimality criter…
We prove the consistency and asymptotic normality of the Laplacian Quasi-Maximum Likelihood Estimator (QMLE) for a general class of causal time series including ARMA, AR($\infty$), GARCH, ARCH($\infty$), ARMA-GARCH, APARCH, ARMA-APARCH,..., processes. We notably exhibit the advantages (moment order and robustness) of this estimator compared to the classical Gaussian QMLE. Numerical simulations confirms the accuracy of this estimator.
The non-Gaussian quasi maximum likelihood estimator is frequently used in GARCH models with intension to improve the efficiency of the GARCH parameters. However, unless the quasi-likelihood happens to be the true one, non-Gaussian QMLE methods suffers inconsistency even if shape parameters in the quasi-likelihood are estimated. To correct this bias, we identify an unknown scale parameter that is critical to the consistent estimation of non-Gaussian QMLE, and propose a two-step non-Gaussian QMLE (2SNG-QMLE) for estimation of the scale parameter and GARCH parameters. This novel approach is consi…
We propose a new estimation scheme for estimation of the volatility parameters of a semimartingale with jumps based on a jump-detection filter. Our filter uses all of data to analyze the relative size of increments and to discriminate jumps more precisely. We construct quasi-maximum likelihood estimators and quasi-Bayesian estimators, and show limit theorems for them including $L^p$-estimates of the error and asymptotic mixed normality based on the framework of the quasi-likelihood analysis. The global jump filters do not need a restrictive condition for the distribution of the small jumps. By…
Strong consistency and asymptotic normality of the Quasi-Maximum Likelihood Estimator (QMLE) are given for a general class of multidimensional causal processes. For particular cases already studied in the literature (for instance univariate or multivariate GARCH, ARCH, ARMA-GARCH processes) the assumptions required for establishing these results are often weaker than existing conditions. The QMLE asymptotic behavior is also given for numerous new examples of univariate or multivariate processes (for instance TARCH or NLARCH processes).
This paper establishes the almost sure convergence and asymptotic normality of levels and differenced quasi maximum-likelihood (QML) estimators of dynamic panel data models. The QML estimators are robust with respect to initial conditions, conditional and time-series heteroskedasticity, and misspecification of the log-likelihood. The paper also provides an ECME algorithm for calculating levels QML estimates. Finally, it uses Monte Carlo experiments to compare the finite sample performance of levels and differenced QML estimators, the differenced GMM estimator, and the system GMM estimator. In …
This paper establishes the strong consistency and asymptotic normality of the quasi-maximum likelihood estimator (QMLE) for a GARCH process with periodically time-varying parameters. We first give a necessary and sufficient condition for the existence of a strictly periodically stationary solution for the periodic GARCH (P-GARCH) equation. As a result, it is shown that the moment of some positive order of the P-GARCH solution is finite, under which we prove the strong consistency and asymptotic normality (CAN) of the QMLE without any condition on the moments of the underlying process.
We address estimation of parametric coefficients of a pure-jump Lévy driven univariate stochastic differential equation (SDE) model, which is observed at high frequency over a fixed time period. It is known from the previous study Masuda (2013) that adopting the conventional Gaussian quasi-maximum likelihood estimator then leads to an inconsistent estimator. In this paper, under the assumption that the driving Lévy process is locally stable, we extend the Gaussian framework into a non-Gaussian counterpart, by introducing a novel quasi-likelihood function formally based on the small-time stable…
Consider an estimation of the Hurst parameter $H\in(0,1)$ and the volatility parameter $σ>0$ for a fractional Brownian motion with a drift term under high-frequency observations with a finite time interval. In the present paper, we propose a consistent estimator of the parameter $θ=(H,σ)$ combining the ideas of a quasi-likelihood function based on a local Gaussian approximation of a high-frequently observed time series and its frequency-domain approximation. Moreover, we prove an asymptotic normality property of the proposed estimator for all $H\in(0,1)$ when the drift process is constant.
Some quasi-arithmetic means of random variables easily give unbiased strongly consistent closed-form estimators of the joint of the location and scale parameters of the Cauchy distribution. The one-step estimators of those quasi-arithmetic means of the Cauchy distribution are considered. We establish the Bahadur efficiency of the maximum likelihood estimator and the one-step estimators. We also show that the rate of the convergence of the mean-squared errors achieves the Cramer-Rao bound. Our results are also applicable to the circular Cauchy distribution.
Neural networks (NN) play a central role in modern Artificial intelligence (AI) technology and has been successfully used in areas such as natural language processing and image recognition. While majority of NN applications focus on prediction and classification, there are increasing interests in studying statistical inference of neural networks. The study of NN statistical inference can enhance our understanding of NN statistical proprieties. Moreover, it can facilitate the NN-based hypothesis testing that can be applied to hypothesis-driven clinical and biomedical research. In this paper, we…
We classify the two-way independence quasi-independence models (or independence models with structural zeros) that have rational maximum likelihood estimators, or MLEs. We give a necessary and sufficient condition on the bipartite graph associated to the model for the MLE to be rational. In this case, we give an explicit formula for the MLE in terms of combinatorial features of this graph. We also use the Horn uniformization to show that for general log-linear models $\mathcal{M}$ with rational MLE, any model obtained by restricting to a face of the cone of sufficient statistics of $\mathcal{M…
The goal of this paper is to describe the application of quasi-likelihood estimating equations for spatially correlated binary data. In this paper, a logistic function is used to model the marginal probability of binary responses in terms of parameters of interest. With mild assumptions on the correlations, the Leonov-Shiryaev formula combined with a comparison of characteristic functions can be used to establish asymptotic normality for linear combinations of the binary responses. The consistency and asymptotic normality for quasi-likelihood estimates can then be derived. By modeling spatial …
Center for Data Science（数据科学中心）；Peking University（北京大学）；Guanghua School of Management（光华管理学院）；Department of Statistics and Data Science（统计与数据科学系）；Tsinghua University（清华大学）
We consider the problem of statistical inference for a class of partially-observed diffusion processes, with discretely-observed data and finite-dimensional parameters. We construct unbiased estimators of the score function, i.e. the gradient of the log-likelihood function with respect to parameters, with no time-discretization bias. These estimators can be straightforwardly employed within stochastic gradient methods to perform maximum likelihood estimation or Bayesian inference. As our proposed methodology only requires access to a time-discretization scheme such as the Euler-Maruyama method…
This paper investigates the asymptotic theory of the quasi-maximum exponential likelihood estimators (QMELE) for ARMA--GARCH models. Under only a fractional moment condition, the strong consistency and the asymptotic normality of the global self-weighted QMELE are obtained. Based on this self-weighted QMELE, the local QMELE is showed to be asymptotically normal for the ARMA model with GARCH (finite variance) and IGARCH errors. A formal comparison of two estimators is given for some cases. A simulation study is carried out to assess the performance of these estimators, and a real example on the…
We propose a class of estimators for the parameters of a GARCH(p,q) sequence. We show that our estimators are consistent and asymptotically normal under mild conditions. The quasi-maximum likelihood and the likelihood estimators are discussed in detail. We show that the maximum likelihood estimator is optimal. If the tail of the distribution of the innovations is polynomial, even a quasi-maximum likelihood estimator based on exponential density performs better than the standard normal density-based quasi-likelihood estimator of Lee and Hansen and Lumsdaine.
Generalized linear models and the quasi-likelihood method extend the ordinary regression models to accommodate more general conditional distributions of the response. Nonparametric methods need no explicit parametric specification, and the resulting model is completely determined by the data themselves. However, nonparametric estimation schemes generally have a slower convergence rate such as the local polynomial smoothing estimation of nonparametric generalized linear models studied in Fan, Heckman and Wand [J. Amer. Statist. Assoc. 90 (1995) 141--150]. In this work, we propose a unified fami…
This paper deals with nonparametric maximum likelihood estimation for Gaussian locally stationary processes. Our nonparametric MLE is constructed by minimizing a frequency domain likelihood over a class of functions. The asymptotic behavior of the resulting estimator is studied. The results depend on the richness of the class of functions. Both sieve estimation and global estimation are considered. Our results apply, in particular, to estimation under shape constraints. As an example, autoregressive model fitting with a monotonic variance function is discussed in detail, including algorithmic …
In this paper the Gaussian quasi maximum likelihood estimator (GQMLE) is generalized by applying a transform to the probability distribution of the data. The proposed estimator, called measure-transformed GQMLE (MT-GQMLE), minimizes the empirical Kullback-Leibler divergence between a transformed probability distribution of the data and a hypothesized Gaussian probability measure. By judicious choice of the transform we show that, unlike the GQMLE, the proposed estimator can gain sensitivity to higher-order statistical moments and resilience to outliers leading to significant mitigation of the …
This paper proposes a novel method to estimate large panel data error-correction models with stationary/non-stationary covariates and spatially dependent errors, which allows for known/unknown group-specific patterns of slope heterogeneity. Analysis is based on composite quasi-likelihood (CQL) maximization which performs estimation and classification simultaneously. The proposed CQL estimator remains unbiased in the presence of misspecification of the unobserved individual/group-specific fixed effects; therefore, neither instrumental variables nor bias corrections/reductions are required. This…
This paper studies the quasi-maximum-likelihood estimator (QMLE) in a general conditionally heteroscedastic time series model of multiplicative form $X_t=σ_tZ_t$, where the unobservable volatility $σ_t$ is a parametric function of $(X_{t-1},...,X_{t-p},σ_{t-1},... ,σ_{t-q})$ for some $p,q\ge0$, and $(Z_t)$ is standardized i.i.d. noise. We assume that these models are solutions to stochastic recurrence equations which satisfy a contraction (random Lipschitz coefficient) property. These assumptions are satisfied for the popular GARCH, asymmetric GARCH and exponential GARCH processes. Exploiting …
