Related papers: Variational inference for steady-state BVARs
The learning and evaluation of energy-based latent variable models (EBLVMs) without any structural assumptions are highly challenging, because the true posteriors and the partition functions in such models are generally intractable. This…
The main goal of this paper is to develop a methodology for estimating time varying parameter vector auto-regression (TVP-VAR) models with a timeinvariant long-run relationship between endogenous variables and changes in exogenous…
Variational Bayes (VB) has shown itself to be a powerful approximation method in many application areas. This paper describes some diagnostics methods which can assess how well the VB approximates the true posterior, particularly with…
We propose a family of variational approximations to Bayesian posterior distributions, called $\alpha$-VB, with provable statistical guarantees. The standard variational approximation is a special case of $\alpha$-VB with $\alpha=1$. When…
In this paper we develop a Bayesian procedure for estimating multivariate stochastic volatility (MSV) using state space models. A multiplicative model based on inverted Wishart and multivariate singular beta distributions is proposed for…
With the introduction of the variational autoencoder (VAE), probabilistic latent variable models have received renewed attention as powerful generative models. However, their performance in terms of test likelihood and quality of generated…
We incorporate heteroskedasticity into Bayesian Additive Regression Trees (BART) by modeling the log of the error variance parameter as a linear function of prespecified covariates. Under this scheme, the Gibbs sampling procedure for the…
In the realm of statistical learning, the increasing volume of accessible data and increasing model complexity necessitate robust methodologies. This paper explores two branches of robust Bayesian methods in response to this trend. The…
Variational inference is becoming more and more popular for approximating intractable posterior distributions in Bayesian statistics and machine learning. Meanwhile, a few recent works have provided theoretical justification and new…
A common method for assessing validity of Bayesian sampling or approximate inference methods makes use of simulated data replicates for parameters drawn from the prior. Under continuity assumptions, quantiles of functions of the simulated…
We study the theoretical properties of a variational Bayes method in the Gaussian Process regression model. We consider the inducing variables method introduced by Titsias (2009a) and derive sufficient conditions for obtaining contraction…
Time-varying parameter VARs with stochastic volatility are routinely used for structural analysis and forecasting in settings involving a few endogenous variables. Applying these models to high-dimensional datasets has proved to be…
Probabilistic modeling is iterative. A scientist posits a simple model, fits it to her data, refines it according to her analysis, and repeats. However, fitting complex models to large data is a bottleneck in this process. Deriving…
The article develops a hybrid Variational Bayes algorithm that combines the mean-field and fixed-form Variational Bayes methods. The new estimation algorithm can be used to approximate any posterior without relying on conjugate priors. We…
We consider the problem of estimating complex statistical latent variable models using variational Bayes methods. These methods are used when exact posterior inference is either infeasible or computationally expensive, and they approximate…
Given discrete time observations over a fixed time interval, we study a nonparametric Bayesian approach to estimation of the volatility coefficient of a stochastic differential equation. We postulate a histogram-type prior on the volatility…
Stochastic planning can be reduced to probabilistic inference in large discrete graphical models, but hardness of inference requires approximation schemes to be used. In this paper we argue that such applications can be disentangled along…
Variational Bayes (VB) has become a widely-used tool for Bayesian inference in statistics and machine learning. Nonetheless, the development of the existing VB algorithms is so far generally restricted to the case where the variational…
Vector autoregressions (VARs) are popular model for analyzing multivariate economic time series. However, VARs can be over-parameterized if the numbers of variables and lags are moderately large. Tensor VAR, a recent solution to…
Inference for mechanistic models is challenging because of nonlinear interactions between model parameters and a lack of identifiability. Here we focus on a specific class of mechanistic models, which we term stable differential equations.…