A comparison of biased regression estimators using a pitman nearness criterion

Abstract

Biased regression estimators have traditionally benn studied using the Mean Square Error (MSE) criterion. Usually these comparisons have been based on the sum of the MSE's of each of the individual parameters, i.e., a scaler valued measure that is the trace of the MSE matrix. However, since this summed MSE does not consider the covariance structure of the estimators, we propose the use of a Pitman Measure of Closeness (PMC) criterion (Keating and Gupta, 1984; Keating and Mason, 1985). In this paper we consider two versions of PMC. One of these compares the estimates and the other compares the resultant predicted values for 12 different regression estimators. These estimators represent three classes of estimators, namely, ridge, shrunken, and principal component estimators. The comparisons of these estimators using the PMC criteria are contrasted with the usual MSE criteria as well as the prediction mean square error. Included in the estimators is a relatively new estimator termed the generalized principal component estimator proposed by Jolliffe. This estimator has previously received little attention in the literature.

Keywords:

• Ridge regression
• James—Stein estimator
• principal component regression
• generalized principal component estimator
• Pitman Measure of Closeness

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Notes

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