No Arabic abstract
This paper investigates the problem of making inference about a parametric model for the regression of an outcome variable $Y$ on covariates $(V,L)$ when data are fused from two separate sources, one which contains information only on $(V, Y)$ while the other contains information only on covariates. This data fusion setting may be viewed as an extreme form of missing data in which the probability of observing complete data $(V,L,Y)$ on any given subject is zero. We have developed a large class of semiparametric estimators, which includes doubly robust estimators, of the regression coefficients in fused data. The proposed method is DR in that it is consistent and asymptotically normal if, in addition to the model of interest, we correctly specify a model for either the data source process under an ignorability assumption, or the distribution of unobserved covariates. We evaluate the performance of our various estimators via an extensive simulation study, and apply the proposed methods to investigate the relationship between net asset value and total expenditure among U.S. households in 1998, while controlling for potential confounders including income and other demographic variables.
Correlated data are ubiquitous in todays data-driven society. A fundamental task in analyzing these data is to understand, characterize and utilize the correlations in them in order to conduct valid inference. Yet explicit regression analysis of correlations has been so far limited to longitudinal data, a special form of correlated data, while implicit analysis via mixed-effects models lacks generality as a full inferential tool. This paper proposes a novel regression approach for modelling the correlation structure, leveraging a new generalized z-transformation. This transformation maps correlation matrices that are constrained to be positive definite to vectors with un-restricted support, and is order-invariant. Building on these two properties, we develop a regression model to relate the transformed parameters to any covariates. We show that coupled with a mean and a variance regression model, the use of maximum likelihood leads to asymptotically normal parameter estimates, and crucially enables statistical inference for all the parameters. The performance of our framework is demonstrated in extensive simulation. More importantly, we illustrate the use of our model with the analysis of the classroom data, a highly unbalanced multilevel clustered data with within-class and within-school correlations, and the analysis of the malaria immune response data in Benin, a longitudinal data with time-dependent covariates in addition to time. Our analyses reveal new insights not previously known.
We consider the estimation of the average treatment effect in the treated as a function of baseline covariates, where there is a valid (conditional) instrument. We describe two doubly robust (DR) estimators: a locally efficient g-estimator, and a targeted minimum loss-based estimator (TMLE). These two DR estimators can be viewed as generalisations of the two-stage least squares (TSLS) method to semi-parametric models that make weaker assumptions. We exploit recent theoretical results that extend to the g-estimator the use of data-adaptive fits for the nuisance parameters. A simulation study is used to compare standard TSLS with the two DR estimators finite-sample performance, (1) when fitted using parametric nuisance models, and (2) using data-adaptive nuisance fits, obtained from the Super Learner, an ensemble machine learning method. Data-adaptive DR estimators have lower bias and improved coverage, when compared to incorrectly specified parametric DR estimators and TSLS. When the parametric model for the treatment effect curve is correctly specified, the g-estimator outperforms all others, but when this model is misspecified, TMLE performs best, while TSLS can result in large biases and zero coverage. Finally, we illustrate the methods by reanalysing the COPERS (COping with persistent Pain, Effectiveness Research in Self-management) trial to make inference about the causal effect of treatment actually received, and the extent to which this is modified by depression at baseline.
Due to concerns about parametric model misspecification, there is interest in using machine learning to adjust for confounding when evaluating the causal effect of an exposure on an outcome. Unfortunately, exposure effect estimators that rely on machine learning predictions are generally subject to so-called plug-in bias, which can render naive p-values and confidence intervals invalid. Progress has been made via proposals like targeted maximum likelihood estimation and more recently double machine learning, which rely on learning the conditional mean of both the outcome and exposure. Valid inference can then be obtained so long as both predictions converge (sufficiently fast) to the truth. Focusing on partially linear regression models, we show that a specific implementation of the machine learning techniques can yield exposure effect estimators that have small bias even when one of the first-stage predictions does not converge to the truth. The resulting tests and confidence intervals are doubly robust. We also show that the proposed estimators may fail to be regular when only one nuisance parameter is consistently estimated; nevertheless, we observe in simulation studies that our proposal leads to reduced bias and improved confidence interval coverage in moderate samples.
Research on Poisson regression analysis for dependent data has been developed rapidly in the last decade. One of difficult problems in a multivariate case is how to construct a cross-correlation structure and at the meantime make sure that the covariance matrix is positive definite. To address the issue, we propose to use convolved Gaussian process (CGP) in this paper. The approach provides a semi-parametric model and offers a natural framework for modeling common mean structure and covariance structure simultaneously. The CGP enables the model to define different covariance structure for each component of the response variables. This flexibility ensures the model to cope with data coming from different resources or having different data structures, and thus to provide accurate estimation and prediction. In addition, the model is able to accommodate large-dimensional covariates. The definition of the model, the inference and the implementation, as well as its asymptotic properties, are discussed. Comprehensive numerical examples with both simulation studies and real data are presented.
Estimation of population size using incomplete lists (also called the capture-recapture problem) has a long history across many biological and social sciences. For example, human rights and other groups often construct partial and overlapping lists of victims of armed conflicts, with the hope of using this information to estimate the total number of victims. Earlier statistical methods for this setup either use potentially restrictive parametric assumptions, or else rely on typically suboptimal plug-in-type nonparametric estimators; however, both approaches can lead to substantial bias, the former via model misspecification and the latter via smoothing. Under an identifying assumption that two lists are conditionally independent given measured covariate information, we make several contributions. First, we derive the nonparametric efficiency bound for estimating the capture probability, which indicates the best possible performance of any estimator, and sheds light on the statistical limits of capture-recapture methods. Then we present a new estimator, and study its finite-sample properties, showing that it has a double robustness property new to capture-recapture, and that it is near-optimal in a non-asymptotic sense, under relatively mild nonparametric conditions. Next, we give a method for constructing confidence intervals for total population size from generic capture probability estimators, and prove non-asymptotic near-validity. Finally, we study our methods in simulations, and apply them to estimate the number of killings and disappearances attributable to different groups in Peru during its internal armed conflict between 1980 and 2000.