The identification of factors associated with mental and behavioral disorders in early childhood is critical both for psychopathology research and the support of primary health care practices. Motivated by the Millennium Cohort Study, in this paper we study the effect of a comprehensive set of covariates on children's emotional and behavioural trajectories in England. To this end, we develop a Quantile Mixed Hidden Markov Model for joint estimation of multiple quantiles in a linear regression setting for multivariate longitudinal data. The novelty of the proposed approach is based on the Multivariate Asymmetric Laplace distribution which allows to jointly estimate the quantiles of the univariate conditional distributions of a multivariate response, accounting for possible correlation between the outcomes. Sources of unobserved heterogeneity and serial dependency due to repeated measures are modeled through the introduction of individual-specific, time-constant random coefficients and time-varying parameters evolving over time with a Markovian structure, respectively. The inferential approach is carried out through the construction of a suitable Expectation-Maximization algorithm without parametric assumptions on the random effects distribution.
We propose a joint model for a time-to-event outcome and a quantile of a continuous response repeatedly measured over time. The quantile and survival processes are associated via shared latent and manifest variables. Our joint model provides a flexible approach to handle informative drop-out in quantile regression. A general Monte Carlo Expectation Maximization strategy based on importance sampling is proposed, which is directly applicable under any distributional assumption for the longitudinal outcome and random effects, and parametric and non-parametric assumptions for the baseline hazard. …
Robust Nonparametric Testing for Structural Changes in Multivariate Volatility via Multiple Quantiles
Xiamen University（厦门大学）；Shanghai University of Finance and Economics（上海财经大学）；Boston College（波士顿学院）；Zhejiang University of Finance and Economics（浙江财经大学）
In epidemiological and clinical studies, identifying patients' phenotypes based on longitudinal profiles is critical to understanding the disease's developmental patterns. The current study was motivated by data from a Canadian birth cohort study, the CHILD Cohort Study. Our goal was to use multiple longitudinal respiratory traits to cluster the participants into subgroups with similar longitudinal respiratory profiles in order to identify clinically relevant disease phenotypes. To appropriately account for distinct structures and types of these longitudinal markers, we proposed a novel joint …
It is important to characterize the temporal trajectories of disease-related biomarkers in order to monitor progression and identify potential points of intervention. This is especially important for neurodegenerative diseases, as therapeutic intervention is most likely to be effective in the preclinical disease stages prior to significant neuronal damage. Longitudinal neuroimaging allows for the measurement of structural, functional, and metabolic integrity of the brain over time at the level of voxels. However, commonly used longitudinal analysis approaches, such as linear mixed effects mode…
The mixed effects model for repeated measures (MMRM) has been widely used for the analysis of longitudinal clinical data collected at a number of fixed time points. We propose a robust extension of the MMRM for skewed and heavy-tailed data on basis of the multivariate skew-t distribution, and it includes the multivariate normal, t, and skew-normal distributions as special cases. An efficient Markov chain Monte Carlo algorithm is developed using the monotone data augmentation and parameter expansion techniques. We employ the algorithm to perform controlled pattern imputations for sensitivity an…
Personality traits are latent variables, and as such, are impossible to measure without the use of an assessment. Responses on the assessments can be influenced by both transient (state-related) error and measurement error, obscuring the true trait levels. Typically, these assessments utilize Likert scales, which yield only discrete data. The loss of information due to the discrete nature of the data represents an additional challenge in assessing the ability of these instruments to measure the latent trait of interest. This paper is concerned with parameter estimation in a model relating a la…
All multivariate extensions of the univariate theory of risk measurement run into the same fundamental problem of the absence, in dimension d > 1, of a canonical ordering of Rd. Based on measure transportation ideas, several attempts have been made recently in the statistical literature to overcome that conceptual difficulty. In Hallin (2017), the concepts of center-outward distribution and quantile functions are developed as generalisations of the classical univariate concepts of distribution and quantile functions, along with their empirical versions. We propose a class of smooth approximati…
The use of quantiles to obtain insights about multivariate data is addressed. It is argued that incisive insights can be obtained by considering directional quantiles, the quantiles of projections. Directional quantile envelopes are proposed as a way to condense this kind of information; it is demonstrated that they are essentially halfspace (Tukey) depth levels sets, coinciding for elliptic distributions (in particular multivariate normal) with density contours. Relevant questions concerning their indexing, the possibility of the reverse retrieval of directional quantile information, invarian…
This paper develops a two-part finite mixture quantile regression model for semi-continuous longitudinal data. The proposed methodology allows heterogeneity sources that influence the model for the binary response variable, to influence also the distribution of the positive outcomes. As is common in the quantile regression literature, estimation and inference on the model parameters are based on the Asymmetric Laplace distribution. Maximum likelihood estimates are obtained through the EM algorithm without parametric assumptions on the random effects distribution. In addition, a penalized versi…
A plethora of static and dynamic models exist to forecast Value-at-Risk and other quantile-related metrics used in financial risk management. Industry practice tends to favour simpler, static models such as historical simulation or its variants whereas most academic research centres on dynamic models in the GARCH family. While numerous studies examine the accuracy of multivariate models for forecasting risk metrics, there is little research on accurately predicting the entire multivariate distribution. Yet this is an essential element of asset pricing or portfolio optimization problems having …
This paper proposes a maximum-likelihood approach to jointly estimate marginal conditional quantiles of multivariate response variables in a linear regression framework. We consider a slight reparameterization of the Multivariate Asymmetric Laplace distribution proposed by Kotz et al (2001) and exploit its location-scale mixture representation to implement a new EM algorithm for estimating model parameters. The idea is to extend the link between the Asymmetric Laplace distribution and the well-known univariate quantile regression model to a multivariate context, i.e. when a multivariate depend…
Quantile regression permits describing how quantiles of a scalar response variable depend on a set of predictors. Because a unique definition of multivariate quantiles is lacking, extending quantile regression to multivariate responses is somewhat complicated. In this paper, we describe a simple approach based on a two-step procedure: in the first step, quantile regression is applied to each response separately; in the second step, the joint distribution of the signs of the residuals is modeled through multinomial regression. The described approach does not require a multidimensional definitio…
Let $X_{nr}$ be the $r$th largest of a random sample of size $n$ from a distribution $F (x) = 1 - \sum_{i = 0}^\infty c_i x^{-α- i β}$ for $α> 0$ and $β> 0$. An inversion theorem is proved and used to derive an expansion for the quantile $F^{-1} (u)$ and powers of it. From this an expansion in powers of $(n^{-1}, n^{-β/α})$ is given for the multivariate moments of the extremes $\{X_{n, n - s_i}, 1 \leq i \leq k \}/n^{1/α}$ for fixed ${\bf s} = (s_1, ..., s_k)$, where $k \geq 1$. Examples include the Cauchy, Student $t$, $F$, second extreme distributions and stable laws of index $α< 1$.
We propose a M-quantile regression model for the analysis of multivariate, continuous, longitudinal data. M-quantile regression represents an appealing alternative to standard regression models, as it combines the robustness of quantile and the efficiency of expectile regression, providing a complete picture of the response variable distribution. Discrete, individual-specific, random parameters are used to account for both dependence within the same response recorded at different times and association between different responses observed on the same sample unit at a given time. A suitable para…
Kink model is developed to analyze the data where the regression function is twostage linear but intersects at an unknown threshold. In quantile regression with longitudinal data, previous work assumed that the unknown threshold parameters or kink points are heterogeneous across different quantiles. However, the location where kink effect happens tend to be the same across different quantiles, especially in a region of neighboring quantile levels. Ignoring such homogeneity information may lead to efficiency loss for estimation. In view of this, we propose a composite estimator for the common k…
Quantile regression models are a powerful tool for studying different points of the conditional distribution of univariate response variables. Their multivariate counterpart extension though is not straightforward, starting with the definition of multivariate quantiles. We propose here a flexible Bayesian quantile regression model when the response variable is multivariate, where we are able to define a structured additive framework for all predictor variables. We build on previous ideas considering a directional approach to define the quantiles of a response variable with multiple-outputs and…
Quantile regression has demonstrated promising utility in longitudinal data analysis. Existing work is primarily focused on modeling cross-sectional outcomes, while outcome trajectories often carry more substantive information in practice. In this work, we develop a trajectory quantile regression framework that is designed to robustly and flexibly investigate how latent individual trajectory features are related to observed subject characteristics. The proposed models are built under modeling with usual parametric assumptions lifted or relaxed. We derive our estimation procedure by novelly tra…
Linear quantile regression models aim at providing a detailed and robust picture of the (conditional) response distribution as function of a set of observed covariates. Longitudinal data represent an interesting field of application of such models; due to their peculiar features, they represent a substantial challenge, in that the standard, cross-sectional, model representation needs to be extended for dealing with such kind of data. In fact, repeated observations from the same statistical unit poses a problem of dependence; in a conditional perspective, this dependence could be ascribed to so…
In this article, we consider a non-parametric Bayesian approach to multivariate quantile regression. The collection of related conditional distributions of a response vector Y given a univariate covariate X is modeled using a Dependent Dirichlet Process (DDP) prior. The DDP is used to introduce dependence across x. As the realizations from a Dirichlet process prior are almost surely discrete, we need to convolve it with a kernel. To model the error distribution as flexibly as possible, we use a countable mixture of multidimensional normal distributions as our kernel. For posterior computations…
This paper develops a framework for quantile regression in binary longitudinal data settings. A novel Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) method is designed to fit the model and its computational efficiency is demonstrated in a simulation study. The proposed approach is flexible in that it can account for common and individual-specific parameters, as well as multivariate heterogeneity associated with several covariates. The methodology is applied to study female labor force participation and home ownership in the United States. The results offer new insights at the various quantiles, which are of …
In ordinary quantile regression, quantiles of different order are estimated one at a time. An alternative approach, which is referred to as quantile regression coefficients modeling (QRCM), is to model quantile regression coefficients as parametric functions of the order of the quantile. In this paper, we describe how the QRCM paradigm can be applied to longitudinal data. We introduce a two-level quantile function, in which two different quantile regression models are used to describe the (conditional) distribution of the within-subject response and that of the individual effects. We propose a…
Motivated by investigating the relationship between progesterone and the days in a menstrual cycle in a longitudinal study, we propose a multi-kink quantile regression model for longitudinal data analysis. It relaxes the linearity condition and assumes different regression forms in different regions of the domain of the threshold covariate. In this paper, we first propose a multi-kink quantile regression for longitudinal data. Two estimation procedures are proposed to estimate the regression coefficients and the kink points locations: one is a computationally efficient profile estimator under …
Bayesian and other likelihood-based methods require specification of a statistical model and may not be fully satisfactory for inference on quantities, such as quantiles, that are not naturally defined as model parameters. In this paper, we construct a direct and model-free Gibbs posterior distribution for multivariate quantiles. Being model-free means that inferences drawn from the Gibbs posterior are not subject to model misspecification bias, and being direct means that no priors for or marginalization over nuisance parameters are required. We show here that the Gibbs posterior enjoys a roo…
In this paper the method of simulated quantiles (MSQ) of Dominicy and Veredas (2013) and Dominick et al. (2013) is extended to a general multivariate framework (MMSQ) and to provide a sparse estimator of the scale matrix (sparse-MMSQ). The MSQ, like alternative likelihood-free procedures, is based on the minimisation of the distance between appropriate statistics evaluated on the true and synthetic data simulated from the postulated model. Those statistics are functions of the quantiles providing an effective way to deal with distributions that do not admit moments of any order like the $α$-St…
When facing multivariate covariates, general semiparametric regression techniques come at hand to propose flexible models that are unexposed to the curse of dimensionality. In this work a semiparametric copula-based estimator for conditional quantiles is investigated for complete or right-censored data. In spirit, the methodology is extending the recent work of Noh et al. (2013) and Noh et al. (2015), as the main idea consists in appropriately defining the quantile regression in terms of a multivariate copula and marginal distributions. Prior estimation of the latter and simple plug-in lead to…
Longitudinal data are often plagued with sparsity of time points where measurements are available. The functional data analysis perspective has been shown to provide an effective and flexible approach to address this problem for the case where measurements are sparse but their times are randomly distributed over an interval. Here we focus on a different scenario where available data can be characterized as snippets, which are very short stretches of longitudinal measurements. For each subject the stretch of available data is much shorter than the time frame of interest, a common occurrence in …
We introduce a new measure of interdependence among the components of a random vector along the main diagonal of the vector copula, i.e. along the line $u_{1}=\ldots=u_{J}$, for $\left(u_{1},\ldots,u_{J}\right)\in\left[0,1\right]^{J}$. Our measure is related to the Shannon entropy of a discrete random variable, hence we call it an "entropy index". This entropy index is invariant with respect to marginal non-decreasing transformations and can be used to quantify the intensity of the vector components association in arbitrary dimensions. We show the applicability of our entropy index by an examp…
Factor analysis is a flexible technique for assessment of multivariate dependence and codependence. Besides being an exploratory tool used to reduce the dimensionality of multivariate data, it allows estimation of common factors that often have an interesting theoretical interpretation in real problems. However, in some specific cases the interest involves the effects of latent factors not only in the mean, but in the entire response distribution, represented by a quantile. This paper introduces a new class of models, named quantile factor models, which combines factor model theory with distri…
University of A Coruña（拉科鲁尼亚大学）；Sapienza University of Rome（罗马第一大学）；Technological Institute for Industrial Mathematics (ITMATI)（工业数学技术研究所）
Three robust methods for clustering multivariate time series from the point of view of generating processes are proposed. The procedures are robust versions of a fuzzy C-means model based on: (i) estimates of the quantile cross-spectral density and (ii) the classical principal component analysis. Robustness to the presence of outliers is achieved by using the so-called metric, noise and trimmed approaches. The metric approach incorporates in the objective function a distance measure aimed at neutralizing the effect of the outliers, the noise approach builds an artificial cluster expected to co…
This paper focuses on generalizing quantiles from the ordering point of view. We propose the concept of partial quantiles, which are based on a given partial order. We establish that partial quantiles are equivariant under order-preserving transformations of the data, robust to outliers, characterize the probability distribution if the partial order is sufficiently rich, generalize the concept of efficient frontier, and can measure dispersion from the partial order perspective. We also study several statistical aspects of partial quantiles. We provide estimators, associated rates of convergenc…
We focus on the construction of confidence corridors for multivariate nonparametric generalized quantile regression functions. This construction is based on asymptotic results for the maximal deviation between a suitable nonparametric estimator and the true function of interest which follow after a series of approximation steps including a Bahadur representation, a new strong approximation theorem and exponential tail inequalities for Gaussian random fields. As a byproduct we also obtain confidence corridors for the regression function in the classical mean regression. In order to deal with th…
A novel procedure to perform fuzzy clustering of multivariate time series generated from different dependence models is proposed. Different amounts of dissimilarity between the generating models or changes on the dynamic behaviours over time are some arguments justifying a fuzzy approach, where each series is associated to all the clusters with specific membership levels. Our procedure considers quantile-based cross-spectral features and consists of three stages: (i) each element is characterized by a vector of proper estimates of the quantile cross-spectral densities, (ii) principal component…
Most of the available multivariate statistical models dictate on fitting different parameters for the covariate effects on each multiple responses. This might be unnecessary and inefficient for some cases. In this article, we propose a modeling framework for multivariate marginal models to analyze multivariate longitudinal data which provides flexible model building strategies. We show that the model handles several response families such as binomial, count and continuous. We illustrate the model on the Mother's Stress and Children's Morbidity data set. A simulation study is conducted to exami…
We propose a statistical method for clustering of multivariate longitudinal data into homogeneous groups. This method relies on a time-varying extension on the classical K-means algorithm, where a multivariate vector autoregressive model is additionally assumed for modeling the evolution of clusters' centroids over time. We base the inference on a least squares specification of the model and coordinate descent algorithm. To illustrate our work, we consider a longitudinal dataset on human development. Three variables are modeled, namely life expectancy, education and gross domestic product.
