Robust Estimation for Discrete-Time State Space Models
Abstract
State space models (SSMs) are now ubiquitous in many fields and increasingly complicated with observed and unobserved variables often interacting in non-linear fashions. The crucial task of validating model assumptions thus becomes difficult, particularly since some assumptions are formulated about unobserved states and thus cannot be checked with data. Motivated by the complex SSMs used for the assessment of fish stocks, we introduce a robust estimation method for SSMs. We prove the Fisher consistency of our estimator and propose an implementation based on automatic differentiation and the Laplace approximation of integrals which yields fast computations. Simulation studies demonstrate that our robust procedure performs well both with and without deviations from model assumptions. Applying it to the stock assessment model for pollock in the North Sea highlights the ability of our procedure to identify years with atypical observations.
Cite
@article{arxiv.2004.05023,
title = {Robust Estimation for Discrete-Time State Space Models},
author = {William H. Aeberhard and Eva Cantoni and Chris Field and Hans R. Kuensch and Joanna Mills Flemming and Ximing Xu},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2004.05023},
year = {2020}
}