Admissible predictive density estimation

Brown, Lawrence D.; George, Edward I.; Xu, Xinyi

Admissible predictive density estimation

Authors

Brown, Lawrence D.

George, Edward I.

Xu, Xinyi

Description

Let $X|μ\sim N_p(μ,v_xI)$ and $Y|μ\sim N_p(μ,v_yI)$ be independent $p$-dimensional multivariate normal vectors with common unknown mean $μ$. Based on observing $X=x$, we consider the problem of estimating the true predictive density $p(y|μ)$ of $Y$ under expected Kullback--Leibler loss. Our focus here is the characterization of admissible procedures for this problem. We show that the class of all generalized Bayes rules is a complete class, and that the easily interpretable conditions of Brown and Hwang [Statistical Decision Theory and Related Topics (1982) III 205--230] are sufficient for a formal Bayes rule to be admissible.
Published in at http://dx.doi.org/10.1214/07-AOS506 the Annals of Statistics (http://www.imstat.org/aos/) by the Institute of Mathematical Statistics (http://www.imstat.org)