Barros, M., Galea, M., Leiva, V., & Santos-Neto, M. (2018). Generalized Tobit models: diagnostics and application in econometrics. J. Appl. Stat., 45(1), 145–167.
Abstract: The standard Tobit model is constructed under the assumption of a normal distribution and has been widely applied in econometrics. Atypical/extreme data have a harmful effect on the maximum likelihood estimates of the standard Tobit model parameters. Then, we need to count with diagnostic tools to evaluate the effect of extreme data. If they are detected, we must have available a Tobit model that is robust to this type of data. The family of elliptically contoured distributions has the Laplace, logistic, normal and Student-t cases as some of its members. This family has been largely used for providing generalizations of models based on the normal distribution, with excellent practical results. In particular, because the Student-t distribution has an additional parameter, we can adjust the kurtosis of the data, providing robust estimates against extreme data. We propose a methodology based on a generalization of the standard Tobit model with errors following elliptical distributions. Diagnostics in the Tobit model with elliptical errors are developed. We derive residuals and global/local influence methods considering several perturbation schemes. This is important because different diagnostic methods can detect different atypical data. We implement the proposed methodology in an R package. We illustrate the methodology with real-world econometrical data by using the R package, which shows its potential applications. The Tobit model based on the Student-t distribution with a small quantity of degrees of freedom displays an excellent performance reducing the influence of extreme cases in the maximum likelihood estimates in the application presented. It provides new empirical evidence on the capabilities of the Student-t distribution for accommodation of atypical data.
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Khosravi, M., Leiva, V., Jamalizadeh, A., & Porcu, E. (2016). On a nonlinear Birnbaum-Saunders model based on a bivariate construction and its characteristics. Commun. Stat.-Theory Methods, 45(3), 772–793.
Abstract: The Birnbaum-Saunders (BS) distribution is an asymmetric probability model that is receiving considerable attention. In this article, we propose a methodology based on a new class of BS models generated from the Student-t distribution. We obtain a recurrence relationship for a BS distribution based on a nonlinear skew-t distribution. Model parameters estimators are obtained by means of the maximum likelihood method, which are evaluated by Monte Carlo simulations. We illustrate the obtained results by analyzing two real data sets. These data analyses allow the adequacy of the proposed model to be shown and discussed by applying model selection tools.
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Leiva, V., Liu, S. Z., Shi, L., & Cysneiros, F. J. A. (2016). Diagnostics in elliptical regression models with stochastic restrictions applied to econometrics. J. Appl. Stat., 43(4), 627–642.
Abstract: We propose an influence diagnostic methodology for linear regression models with stochastic restrictions and errors following elliptically contoured distributions. We study how a perturbation may impact on the mixed estimation procedure of parameters in the model. Normal curvatures and slopes for assessing influence under usual schemes are derived, including perturbations of case-weight, response variable, and explanatory variable. Simulations are conducted to evaluate the performance of the proposed methodology. An example with real-world economy data is presented as an illustration.
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