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Sparse Estimators and the Oracle Property, or the Return of Hodges' Estimator

Author

Listed:
  • Hannes Leeb

    (Dept. of Statistics, Yale University)

  • Benedikt M. Poetscher

    (Dept. of Statistics, University of Vienna)

Abstract

We point out some pitfalls related to the concept of an oracle property as used in Fan and Li (2001, 2002, 2004) which are reminiscent of the well-known pitfalls related to Hodges’ estimator. The oracle property is often a consequence of sparsity of an estimator. We show that any estimator satisfying a sparsity property has maximal risk that converges to the supremum of the loss function; in particular, the maximal risk diverges to infinity when ever the loss function is unbounded. For ease of presentation the result is set in the framework of a linear regression model, but generalizes far beyond that setting. In a Monte Carlo study we also assess the extent of the problem infinite samples for the smoothly clipped absolute deviation (SCAD) estimator introduced in Fan and Li (2001). We find that this estimator can perform rather poorly infinite samples and that its worst-case performance relative to maximum likelihood deteriorates with increasing sample size when the estimator is tuned to sparsity.

Suggested Citation

  • Hannes Leeb & Benedikt M. Poetscher, 2005. "Sparse Estimators and the Oracle Property, or the Return of Hodges' Estimator," Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers 1500, Cowles Foundation for Research in Economics, Yale University, revised Apr 2007.
    • Handle: RePEc:cwl:cwldpp:1500
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    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Jianqing Fan & Runze Li, 2004. "New Estimation and Model Selection Procedures for Semiparametric Modeling in Longitudinal Data Analysis," Journal of the American Statistical Association, American Statistical Association, vol. 99, pages 710-723, January.
    2. Leeb, Hannes & Pötscher, Benedikt M., 2006. "Performance Limits For Estimators Of The Risk Or Distribution Of Shrinkage-Type Estimators, And Some General Lower Risk-Bound Results," Econometric Theory, Cambridge University Press, vol. 22(1), pages 69-97, February.
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    8. Leeb, Hannes & Pötscher, Benedikt M., 2005. "Model Selection And Inference: Facts And Fiction," Econometric Theory, Cambridge University Press, vol. 21(1), pages 21-59, February.
    9. Leeb, Hannes & Pötscher, Benedikt M., 2006. "Performance Limits For Estimators Of The Risk Or Distribution Of Shrinkage-Type Estimators, And Some General Lower Risk-Bound Results," Econometric Theory, Cambridge University Press, vol. 22(1), pages 69-97, February.
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    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    Oracle property; Sparsity; Penalized maximum likelihood; Penalized least squares; Hodges’ estimator; SCAD; Lasso; Bridge estimator; Hard-thresholding; Maximal risk; Maximal absolute bias; Non-uniform limits;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • C20 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Single Equation Models; Single Variables - - - General
    • C51 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Econometric Modeling - - - Model Construction and Estimation

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