Estimating high quantiles plays an important role in the context of risk management. This involves extrapolation of an unknown distribution function. In this paper we propose three methods, namely, the normal approximation method, the likelihood ratio method and the data tilting method, to construct confidence regions for high quantiles of a heavy tailed distribution. A simulation study prefers the data tilting method.
In several different fields, there is interest in analyzing the upper or lower tail quantile of the underlying distribution rather than mean or center quantile. However, the investigation of the tail quantile is difficult because of data sparsity. In this paper, we attempt to develop nonparametric quantile regression for the extremal quantile level. In extremal quantile regression, there are two types of technical conditions of the order of convergence of the quantile level: intermediate order or extreme order. For the intermediate order quantile, the ordinary nonparametric estimator is used. …
In this work, we focus on some conditional extreme risk measures estimation for elliptical random vectors. In a previous paper, we proposed a methodology to approximate extreme quantiles, based on two extremal parameters. We thus propose some estimators for these parameters, and study their asymptotic properties in the case of heavy-tailed distributions. Thereafter, from these parameters, we construct extreme conditional quantiles estimators, and give their consistency properties. Using recent results on the asymptotic relationship between quantiles and other risk measures, we deduce estimator…
This paper presents two results concerning uniform confidence intervals for the tail index and the extreme quantile. First, we show that it is impossible to construct a length-optimal confidence interval satisfying the correct uniform coverage over a local non-parametric family of tail distributions. Second, in light of the impossibility result, we construct honest confidence intervals that are uniformly valid by incorporating the worst-case bias in the local non-parametric family. The proposed method is applied to simulated data and a real data set of National Vital Statistics from National C…
We provide confidence bands for isotonic quantile curves in nonparametric univariate regression with guaranteed given coverage probability. The method is an adaptation of the confidence bands of Duembgen and Johns (2004) for isotonic median curves.
We consider the problem of automatic variable selection in a linear model with asymmetric or heavy-tailed errors when the number of explanatory variables diverges with the sample size. For this high-dimensional model, the penalized least square method is not appropriate and the quantile framework makes the inference more difficult because to the non differentiability of the loss function. We propose and study an estimation method by penalizing the expectile process with an adaptive LASSO penalty. Two cases are considered: the number of model parameters is smaller and afterwards larger than the…
Empirical-likelihood-based confidence intervals for a mean were introduced by Owen [Biometrika 75 (1988) 237-249], where at least a finite second moment is required. This excludes some important distributions, for example, those in the domain of attraction of a stable law with index between 1 and 2. In this article we use a method similar to Qin and Wong [Scand. J. Statist. 23 (1996) 209-219] to derive an empirical-likelihood-based confidence interval for the mean when the underlying distribution has heavy tails. Our method can easily be extended to obtain a confidence interval for any order o…
In this paper, we tackle the problem of prediction and confidence intervals for time series using a statistical learning approach and quantile loss functions. In a first time, we show that the Gibbs estimator (also known as Exponentially Weighted aggregate) is able to predict as well as the best predictor in a given family for a wide set of loss functions. In particular, using the quantile loss function of Koenker and Bassett (1978), this allows to build confidence intervals. We apply these results to the problem of prediction and confidence regions for the French Gross Domestic Product (GDP) …
Let $X_1, \ldots, X_n$ be some i.i.d. observations from a heavy tailed distribution $F$, i.e. such that the common distribution of the excesses over a high threshold $u_n$ can be approximated by a Generalized Pareto Distribution $G_{γ,σ_n}$ with $γ>0$. This work is devoted to the problem of finding confidence regions for the couple $(γ,σ_n)$ : combining the empirical likelihood methodology with estimation equations (close but not identical to the likelihood equations) introduced by J. Zhang (Australian and New Zealand J. Stat n.49(1), 2007), asymptotically valid confidence regions for $(γ,σ_n)…
In this paper, we investigate the extreme-value methodology, to propose an improved estimator of the conditional tail expectation ($CTE$) for a loss distribution with a finite mean but infinite variance. The present work introduces a new estimator of the $CTE$ based on the bias-reduced estimators of high quantile for heavy-tailed distributions. The asymptotic normality of the proposed estimator is established and checked, in a simulation study. Moreover, we compare, in terms of bias and mean squared error, our estimator with the known old estimator.
We address the estimation of quantiles from heavy-tailed distributions when functional covariate information is available and in the case where the order of the quantile converges to one as the sample size increases. Such "extreme" quantiles can be located in the range of the data or near and even beyond the boundary of the sample, depending on the convergence rate of their order to one. Nonparametric estimators of these functional extreme quantiles are introduced, their asymptotic distributions are established and their finite sample behavior is investigated.
Thus far, likelihood-based interval estimates for quantiles have not been studied in the literature on interval censored case 2 data and partly interval censored data, and, in this context, the use of smoothing has not been considered for any type of censored data. This article constructs smoothed weighted empirical likelihood ratio confidence intervals (WELRCI) for quantiles in a unified framework for various types of censored data, including right censored data, doubly censored data, interval censored data and partly interval censored data. The fourth order expansion of the weighted empirica…
This work deals with the estimation of the extreme value index and extreme quantiles for heavy tailed data,randomly right truncated by another heavy tailed variable. Under mild assumptions and the condition thatthe truncated variable is less heavy-tailed than the truncating variable, asymptotic normality is proved for bothestimators. The proposed estimator of the extreme value index is an adaptation of the Hill estimator, in thenatural form of a Lynden-Bell integral. Simulations illustrate the quality of the estimators under a variety ofsituations.
The QQ plot is a commonly used technique for informally deciding whether a univariate random sample of size n comes from a specified distribution F. The QQ plot graphs the sample quantiles against the theoretical quantiles of F and then a visual check is made to see whether or not the points are close to a straight line. For a location and scale family of distributions, the intercept and slope of the straight line provide estimates for the shift and scale parameters of the distribution respectively. Here we consider the set S_n of points forming the QQ plot as a random closed set in R^2. We sh…
We present new estimators of the mean of a real valued random variable, based on PAC-Bayesian iterative truncation. We analyze the non-asymptotic minimax properties of the deviations of estimators for distributions having either a bounded variance or a bounded kurtosis. It turns out that these minimax deviations are of the same order as the deviations of the empirical mean estimator of a Gaussian distribution. Nevertheless, the empirical mean itself performs poorly at high confidence levels for the worst distribution with a given variance or kurtosis (which turns out to be heavy tailed). To ob…
This paper investigates the effects of smoothed bootstrap iterations on coverage probabilities of smoothed bootstrap and bootstrap-t confidence intervals for population quantiles, and establishes the optimal kernel bandwidths at various stages of the smoothing procedures. The conventional smoothed bootstrap and bootstrap-t methods have been known to yield one-sided coverage errors of orders O(n^{-1/2}) and o(n^{-2/3}), respectively, for intervals based on the sample quantile of a random sample of size n. We sharpen the latter result to O(n^{-5/6}) with proper choices of bandwidths at the boots…
A novel approach to quantile estimation in multivariate linear regression models with change-points is proposed: the change-point detection and the model estimation are both performed automatically, by adopting either the quantile fused penalty or the adaptive version of the quantile fused penalty. These two methods combine the idea of the check function used for the quantile estimation and the $L_1$ penalization principle known from the signal processing and, unlike some standard approaches, the presented methods go beyond typical assumptions usually required for the model errors, such as sub…
In this paper we initiate a study of non parametric contextual bandits under shape constraints on the mean reward function. Specifically, we study a setting where the context is one dimensional, and the mean reward function is isotonic with respect to this context. We propose a policy for this problem and show that it attains minimax rate optimal regret. Moreover, we show that the same policy enjoys automatic adaptation; that is, for subclasses of the parameter space where the true mean reward functions are also piecewise constant with $k$ pieces, this policy remains minimax rate optimal simul…
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…
The paper considers a linear regression model in high-dimension for which the predictive variables can change the influence on the response variable at unknown times (called change-points). Moreover, the particular case of the heavy-tailed errors is considered. In this case, least square method with LASSO or adaptive LASSO penalty can not be used since the theoretical assumptions do not occur or the estimators are not robust. Then, the quantile model with SCAD penalty or median regression with LASSO-type penalty allows, in the same time, to estimate the parameters on every segment and eliminat…
Bootstrap inference is a powerful tool for obtaining robust inference for quantiles and difference-in-quantiles estimators. The computationally intensive nature of bootstrap inference has made it infeasible in large-scale experiments. In this paper, the theoretical properties of the Poisson bootstrap algorithm and quantile estimators are used to derive alternative resampling-free algorithms for Poisson bootstrap inference that reduce the computational complexity substantially without additional assumptions. These findings are connected to existing literature on analytical confidence intervals …
Many measures of peakedness, heavy-tailedness and kurtosis have been proposed in the literature, mainly because kurtosis, as originally defined, is a complex combination of the other two concepts. Insight into all three concepts can be gained by studying Ruppert's ratios of interquantile ranges. They are not only monotone in Horn's measure of peakedness when applied to the central portion of the population, but also monotone in the practical tail-index of Morgenthaler and Tukey, when applied to the tails. Distribution-free confidence intervals are found for Ruppert's ratios, and sample sizes r…
We use bias-reduced estimators of high quantiles, of heavy-tailed distributions, to introduce a new estimator of the mean in the case of infinite second moment. The asymptotic normality of the proposed estimator is established and checked, in a simulation study, by four of the most popular goodness-of-fit tests for different sample sizes. Moreover, we compare, in terms of bias and mean squared error, our estimator with Peng's estimator (Peng, 2001) and we evaluate the accuracy of some resulting confidence intervals.
A novel statistical method is proposed and investigated for estimating a heavy tailed density under mild smoothness assumptions. Statistical analyses of heavy-tailed distributions are susceptible to the problem of sparse information in the tail of the distribution getting washed away by unrelated features of a hefty bulk. The proposed Bayesian method avoids this problem by incorporating smoothness and tail regularization through a carefully specified semiparametric prior distribution, and is able to consistently estimate both the density function and its tail index at near minimax optimal rate…
We consider a flexible semiparametric quantile regression model for analyzing high dimensional heterogeneous data. This model has several appealing features: (1) By considering different conditional quantiles, we may obtain a more complete picture of the conditional distribution of a response variable given high dimensional covariates. (2) The sparsity level is allowed to be different at different quantile levels. (3) The partially linear additive structure accommodates nonlinearity and circumvents the curse of dimensionality. (4) It is naturally robust to heavy-tailed distributions. In this p…
We consider estimation of the extreme value index and extreme quantiles for heavy-tailed data that are right-censored. We study a general procedure of removing low importance observations in tail estimators. This trimming procedure is applied to the state-of-the-art estimators for randomly right-censored tail estimators. Through an averaging procedure over the amount of trimming we derive new kernel type estimators. Extensive simulation suggests that one of the new considered kernels leads to a highly competitive estimator against virtually any other available alternative in this framework. Mo…
A simultaneous change-point detection and estimation in a piece-wise constant model is a common task in modern statistics. If, in addition, the whole estimation can be performed automatically, in just one single step without going through any hypothesis tests for non-identifiable models, or unwieldy classical a-posterior methods, it becomes an interesting, but also challenging idea. In this paper we introduce the estimation method based on the quantile LASSO approach. Unlike standard LASSO approaches, our method does not rely on typical assumptions usually required for the model errors, such a…
In this paper, we consider estimation of the conditional mode of an outcome variable given regressors. To this end, we propose and analyze a computationally scalable estimator derived from a linear quantile regression model and develop asymptotic distributional theory for the estimator. Specifically, we find that the pointwise limiting distribution is a scale transformation of Chernoff's distribution despite the presence of regressors. In addition, we consider analytical and subsampling-based confidence intervals for the proposed estimator. We also conduct Monte Carlo simulations to assess the…
We propose three novel consistent specification tests for quantile regression models which generalize former tests in three ways. First, we allow the covariate effects to be quantile-dependent and nonlinear. Second, we allow parameterizing the conditional quantile functions by appropriate basis functions, rather than parametrically. We are hence able to test for functional forms beyond linearity, while retaining the linear effects as special cases. In both cases, the induced class of conditional distribution functions is tested with a Cramér-von Mises type test statistic for which we derive th…
By the modified directed likelihood, higher order accurate confidence limits for a scalar parameter are obtained from the likelihood. They are conveniently described in terms of a confidence distribution, that is a sample dependent distribution function on the parameter space. In this paper we explore a different route to accurate confidence limits via tail-symmetric confidence curves, that is curves that describe equal tailed intervals at any level. Instead of modifying the directed likelihood, we consider inversion of the log-likelihood ratio when evaluated at the median of the maximum likel…
We propose confidence sequences -- sequences of confidence intervals which are valid uniformly over time -- for quantiles of any distribution over a complete, fully-ordered set, based on a stream of i.i.d. observations. We give methods both for tracking a fixed quantile and for tracking all quantiles simultaneously. Specifically, we provide explicit expressions with small constants for intervals whose widths shrink at the fastest possible $\sqrt{t^{-1} \log\log t}$ rate, along with a non-asymptotic concentration inequality for the empirical distribution function which holds uniformly over time…
This paper introduces inter-order formulas for partial and complete moments of a Student $t$ distribution with $n$ degrees of freedom. We show how the partial moment of order $n - j$ about any real value $m$ can be expressed in terms of the partial moment of order $j - 1$ for $j$ in $\{1,\dots, n \}$. Closed form expressions for the complete moments are also established. We then focus on $L_p$-quantiles, which represent a class of generalized quantiles defined through an asymmetric $p$-power loss function. Based on the results obtained, we also show that for a Student $t$ distribution the $L_{…
This work proposes new inference methods for a regression coefficient of interest in a (heterogeneous) quantile regression model. We consider a high-dimensional model where the number of regressors potentially exceeds the sample size but a subset of them suffice to construct a reasonable approximation to the conditional quantile function. The proposed methods are (explicitly or implicitly) based on orthogonal score functions that protect against moderate model selection mistakes, which are often inevitable in the approximately sparse model considered in the present paper. We establish the unif…
Exploratory data analysis is often used to test the goodness-of-fit of sample observations to specific target distributions. A few such graphical tools have been extensively used to detect subexponential or heavy-tailed behavior in observed data. In this paper we discuss asymptotic limit behavior of two such plotting tools: the quantile-quantile plot and the mean excess plot. The weak consistency of these plots to fixed limit sets in an appropriate topology of $\mathbb{R}^2$ has been shown in Das and Resnick (Stoch. Models 24 (2008) 103-132) and Ghosh and Resnick (Stochastic Process. Appl. 120…
This paper, investigates the conditional quantile estimation of a scalar random response and a functional random covariate (i.e. valued in some infinite-dimensional space) whenever {\it functional stationary ergodic data with random censorship} are considered. We introduce a kernel type estimator of the conditional quantile function. We establish the strong consistency with rate of this estimator as well as the asymptotic normality which induces a confidence interval that is usable in practice since it does not depend on any unknown quantity. An application to electricity peak demand interval …
Consider the empirical measure, $\hat{\mathbb{P}}_N$, associated to $N$ i.i.d. samples of a given probability distribution $\mathbb{P}$ on the unit interval. For fixed $\mathbb{P}$ the Wasserstein distance between $\hat{\mathbb{P}}_N$ and $\mathbb{P}$ is a random variable on the sample space $[0,1]^N$. Our main result is that its normalised quantiles are asymptotically maximised when $\mathbb{P}$ is a convex combination between the uniform distribution supported on the two points $\{0,1\}$ and the uniform distribution on the unit interval $[0,1]$. This allows us to obtain explicit asymptotic c…
The class of $α$-stable distributions is widely used in various applications, especially for modelling heavy-tailed data. Although the $α$-stable distributions have been used in practice for many years, new methods for identification, testing, and estimation are still being refined and new approaches are being proposed. The constant development of new statistical methods is related to the low efficiency of existing algorithms, especially when the underlying sample is small or the underlying distribution is close to Gaussian. In this paper we propose a new estimation algorithm for stability ind…
In this paper we propose and study a version of the Dyadic Classification and Regression Trees (DCART) estimator from Donoho (1997) for (fixed design) quantile regression in general dimensions. We refer to this proposed estimator as the QDCART estimator. Just like the mean regression version, we show that a) a fast dynamic programming based algorithm with computational complexity $O(N \log N)$ exists for computing the QDCART estimator and b) an oracle risk bound (trading off squared error and a complexity parameter of the true signal) holds for the QDCART estimator. This oracle risk bound then…
Expectiles define the only law-invariant, coherent and elicitable risk measure apart from the expectation. The popularity of expectile-based risk measures is steadily growing and their properties have been studied for independent data, but further results are needed to use extreme expectiles with dependent time series such as financial data. In this paper we establish a basis for inference on extreme expectiles and expectile-based marginal expected shortfall in a general $β$-mixing context that encompasses ARMA, ARCH and GARCH models with heavy-tailed innovations. Simulations and applications …
We show that the full-sample bootstrap is asymptotically valid for constructing confidence intervals for high-quantiles, tail probabilities, and other tail parameters of a univariate distribution. This resolves the doubts that have been raised about the validity of such bootstrap methods. In our extensive simulation study, the overall performance of the bootstrap method was better than that of the standard asymptotic method, indicating that the bootstrap method is at least as good, if not better than, the asymptotic method for inference. This paper also lays the foundation for developing boots…
