Interest is in evaluating, by Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) simulation, the expected value of a function with respect to a, possibly unnormalized, probability distribution. A general purpose variance reduction technique for the MCMC estimator, based on the zero-variance principle introduced in the physics literature, is proposed. Conditions for asymptotic unbiasedness of the zero-variance estimator are derived. A central limit theorem is also proved under regularity conditions. The potential of the idea is illustrated with real applications to probit, logit and GARCH Bayesian models. For all these models, a central limit theorem and unbiasedness for the zero-variance estimator are proved (see the supplementary material available on-line).

Zero Variance Markov Chain Monte Carlo for Bayesian Estimators

MIRA, ANTONIETTA;IMPARATO, DANIELE ENRICO
2013-01-01

Abstract

Interest is in evaluating, by Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) simulation, the expected value of a function with respect to a, possibly unnormalized, probability distribution. A general purpose variance reduction technique for the MCMC estimator, based on the zero-variance principle introduced in the physics literature, is proposed. Conditions for asymptotic unbiasedness of the zero-variance estimator are derived. A central limit theorem is also proved under regularity conditions. The potential of the idea is illustrated with real applications to probit, logit and GARCH Bayesian models. For all these models, a central limit theorem and unbiasedness for the zero-variance estimator are proved (see the supplementary material available on-line).
2013
Control variates · GARCH models · Logistic regression · Metropolis-Hastings algorithm · Variance reduction
Mira, Antonietta; Reza, Solgi; Imparato, DANIELE ENRICO
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Utilizza questo identificativo per citare o creare un link a questo documento: https://hdl.handle.net/11383/1781321
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