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A comparative study of Monte Carlo methods for efficient evaluation of marginal likelihood

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  • Ardia, David
  • Baştürk, Nalan
  • Hoogerheide, Lennart
  • van Dijk, Herman K.

Abstract

Strategic choices for efficient and accurate evaluation of marginal likelihoods by means of Monte Carlo simulation methods are studied for the case of highly non-elliptical posterior distributions. A comparative analysis is presented of possible advantages and limitations of different simulation techniques; of possible choices of candidate distributions and choices of target or warped target distributions; and finally of numerical standard errors. The importance of a robust and flexible estimation strategy is demonstrated where the complete posterior distribution is explored. Given an appropriately yet quickly tuned adaptive candidate, straightforward importance sampling provides a computationally efficient estimator of the marginal likelihood (and a reliable and easily computed corresponding numerical standard error) in the cases investigated, which include a non-linear regression model and a mixture GARCH model. Warping the posterior density can lead to a further gain in efficiency, but it is more important that the posterior kernel be appropriately wrapped by the candidate distribution than that it is warped.

Suggested Citation

  • Ardia, David & Baştürk, Nalan & Hoogerheide, Lennart & van Dijk, Herman K., 2012. "A comparative study of Monte Carlo methods for efficient evaluation of marginal likelihood," Computational Statistics & Data Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 56(11), pages 3398-3414.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:csdana:v:56:y:2012:i:11:p:3398-3414
    DOI: 10.1016/j.csda.2010.09.001
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    More about this item

    Keywords

    Marginal likelihood; Bayes factor; Importance sampling; Bridge sampling; Adaptive mixture of Student-t distributions;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • C11 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Econometric and Statistical Methods and Methodology: General - - - Bayesian Analysis: General
    • C15 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Econometric and Statistical Methods and Methodology: General - - - Statistical Simulation Methods: General
    • C52 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Econometric Modeling - - - Model Evaluation, Validation, and Selection

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