A comprehensive, up-to-date textbook on nonparametric methods for students and researchers Until now, students and researchers in nonparametric and semiparametric statistics and econometrics have had to turn to the latest journal articles to keep pace with these emerging methods of economic analysis. Nonparametric Econometrics fills a major gap by gathering together the most up-to-date theory and techniques and presenting them in a remarkably straightforward and accessible format. The empirical tests, data, and exercises included in this textbook help make it the ideal introduction for graduate students and an indispensable resource for researchers. Nonparametric and semiparametric methods have attracted a great deal of attention from statisticians in recent decades. While the majority of existing books on the subject operate from the presumption that the underlying data is strictly continuous in nature, more often than not social scientists deal with categorical data—nominal and ordinal—in applied settings. The conventional nonparametric approach to dealing with the presence of discrete variables is acknowledged to be unsatisfactory. This book is tailored to the needs of applied econometricians and social scientists. Qi Li and Jeffrey Racine emphasize nonparametric techniques suited to the rich array of data types—continuous, nominal, and ordinal—within one coherent framework. They also emphasize the properties of nonparametric estimators in the presence of potentially irrelevant variables. Nonparametric Econometrics covers all the material necessary to understand and apply nonparametric methods for real-world problems.

Density estimation has evolved enormously since the days of bar plots and histograms, but researchers and users are still struggling with the problem of the selection of the bin widths. This book is the first to explore a new paradigm for the data-based or automatic selection of the free parameters of density estimates in general so that the expected error is within a given constant multiple of the best possible error. The paradigm can be used in nearly all density estimates and for most model selection problems, both parametric and nonparametric.

Although there has been a surge of interest in density estimation in recent years, much of the published research has been concerned with purely technical matters with insufficient emphasis given to the technique's practical value. Furthermore, the subject has been rather inaccessible to the general statistician. The account presented in this book places emphasis on topics of methodological importance, in the hope that this will facilitate broader practical application of density estimation and also encourage research into relevant theoretical work. The book also provides an introduction to the subject for those with general interests in statistics. The important role of density estimation as a graphical technique is reflected by the inclusion of more than 50 graphs and figures throughout the text. Several contexts in which density estimation can be used are discussed, including the exploration and presentation of data, nonparametric discriminant analysis, cluster analysis, simulation and the bootstrap, bump hunting, projection pursuit, and the estimation of hazard rates and other quantities that depend on the density. This book includes general survey of methods available for density estimation. The Kernel method, both for univariate and multivariate data, is discussed in detail, with particular emphasis on ways of deciding how much to smooth and on computation aspects. Attention is also given to adaptive methods, which smooth to a greater degree in the tails of the distribution, and to methods based on the idea of penalized likelihood.

Density estimation has evolved enormously since the days of bar plots and histograms, but researchers and users are still struggling with the problem of the selection of the bin widths. This book is the first to explore a new paradigm for the data-based or automatic selection of the free parameters of density estimates in general so that the expected error is within a given constant multiple of the best possible error. The paradigm can be used in nearly all density estimates and for most model selection problems, both parametric and nonparametric.

Clarifies modern data analysis through nonparametric density estimation for a complete working knowledge of the theory and methods Featuring a thoroughly revised presentation, Multivariate Density Estimation: Theory, Practice, and Visualization, Second Edition maintains an intuitive approach to the underlying methodology and supporting theory of density estimation. Including new material and updated research in each chapter, the Second Edition presents additional clarification of theoretical opportunities, new algorithms, and up-to-date coverage of the unique challenges presented in the field of data analysis. The new edition focuses on the various density estimation techniques and methods that can be used in the field of big data. Defining optimal nonparametric estimators, the Second Edition demonstrates the density estimation tools to use when dealing with various multivariate structures in univariate, bivariate, trivariate, and quadrivariate data analysis. Continuing to illustrate the major concepts in the context of the classical histogram, Multivariate Density Estimation: Theory, Practice, and Visualization, Second Edition also features: Over 150 updated figures to clarify theoretical results and to show analyses of real data sets An updated presentation of graphic visualization using computer software such as R A clear discussion of selections of important research during the past decade, including mixture estimation, robust parametric modeling algorithms, and clustering More than 130 problems to help readers reinforce the main concepts and ideas presented Boxed theorems and results allowing easy identification of crucial ideas Figures in color in the digital versions of the book A website with related data sets Multivariate Density Estimation: Theory, Practice, and Visualization, Second Edition is an ideal reference for theoretical and applied statisticians, practicing engineers, as well as readers interested in the theoretical aspects of nonparametric estimation and the application of these methods to multivariate data. The Second Edition is also useful as a textbook for introductory courses in kernel statistics, smoothing, advanced computational statistics, and general forms of statistical distributions.

This book develops Doukhan/Louhichi's 1999 idea to measure asymptotic independence of a random process. The authors, who helped develop this theory, propose examples of models fitting such conditions: stable Markov chains, dynamical systems or more complicated models, nonlinear, non-Markovian, and heteroskedastic models with infinite memory. Applications are still needed to develop a method of analysis for nonlinear times series, and this book provides a strong basis for additional studies.

Measuring the degree of association between random variables is a task inherent in many practical applications such as risk management and financial modeling. Well-known measures like Spearman's rho and Kendall's tau can be expressed in terms of the underlying copula only, hence, being independent of the underlying univariate marginal distributions. Opposed to these classical measures of association, mutual information, which is derived from information theory, constitutes a fundamentally different approach of measuring association. Although this measure is likewise independent of the univariate margins, it is not a functional of the copula but of the corresponding copula density. Besides the theoretical properties of mutual information as a measure of multivariate association, possibilities to estimate the copula density based on observations of continuous distributions are investigated. To cope with the effect of boundary bias, new estimators are introduced and existing functionals are generalized to the multivariate case. The performance of these estimators is evaluated in comparison to common kernel density estimation schemes. To facilitate variance estimation by means of resampling methods like bootstrapping, an algorithm is introduced, which significantly reduces computation time in comparison with pre-implemented algorithms. In practical applications, complete continuous data is oftentimes not available to the analyst. Instead, categorial data derived from the underlying continuous distribution may be given. Hence, estimation of the copula and its density based on contingency tables is investigated. The newly developed estimators are employed to derive estimates of Spearman's rho and Kendall's tau and their performance is compared.

This book describes computational problems related to kernel density estimation (KDE) – one of the most important and widely used data smoothing techniques. A very detailed description of novel FFT-based algorithms for both KDE computations and bandwidth selection are presented. The theory of KDE appears to have matured and is now well developed and understood. However, there is not much progress observed in terms of performance improvements. This book is an attempt to remedy this. The book primarily addresses researchers and advanced graduate or postgraduate students who are interested in KDE and its computational aspects. The book contains both some background and much more sophisticated material, hence also more experienced researchers in the KDE area may find it interesting. The presented material is richly illustrated with many numerical examples using both artificial and real datasets. Also, a number of practical applications related to KDE are presented.

Kernel smoothing refers to a general methodology for recovery of underlying structure in data sets. The basic principle is that local averaging or smoothing is performed with respect to a kernel function. This book provides uninitiated readers with a feeling for the principles, applications, and analysis of kernel smoothers. This is facilita