关于厚尾和偏态的贝叶斯建模

On Bayesian Modeling of Fat Tails and Skewness

Journal of the American Statistical Association · 1998
被引 474 · 同刊同年前 5%
ABS 4

中文导读

提出一种将偏态引入对称分布的方法,并应用于学生t分布生成偏态学生分布,用于贝叶斯线性回归建模,处理误差项的厚尾和偏态特征。

Abstract

We consider a Bayesian analysis of linear regression models that can account for skewed error distributions with fat tails.The latter two features are often observed characteristics of empirical data sets, and we will formally incorporate them in the inferential process.A general procedure for introducing skewness into symmetric distributions is rst proposed.Even though this allows for a great deal of exibility in distributional shape, tail behaviour is not aected.In addition, the impact on the existence of posterior moments in a regression model with unknown scale under commonly used improper priors is quite limited.Applying this skewness procedure to a Student-t distribution, we generate a \skewed Student" distribution, which displays both exible tails and possible skewness, each e n tirely controlled by a separate scalar parameter.The linear regression model with a s k ewed Student error term is the main focus of the paper: we rst characterize existence of the posterior distribution and its moments, using standard improper priors and allowing for inference on skewness and tail parameters.For posterior inference with this model, a numerical procedure is suggested, using Gibbs sampling with data augmentation.The latter proves very easy to implement and renders the analysis of quite challenging problems a practical possibility.Two examples illustrate the use of this model in empirical data analysis.

贝叶斯统计计量经济学线性回归偏态分布厚尾分布