Quadratic regression functionals are important for bandwidth selection of nonparametric regression techniques and for nonparametric goodness-of-fit test. Based on local polynomial regression, we propose estimators for weighted integrals of squared derivatives of regression functions. The rates of convergence in mean square error are calculated under various degrees of smoothness and appropriate values of the smoothing parameter. Asymptotic distributions of the proposed quadratic estimators are considered with the Gaussian noise assumption. It is shown that when the estimators are pseudo-quadratic (linear components dominate quadratic components), asymptotic normality with rate n-1/2 can be achieved.

Abstract Markowitz (1952, 1959) laid down the ground-breaking work on mean-variance analysis without gross exposure constraints. Under this framework, the theoretical optimal allocation vector can be different from the estimated one due to intrinsic difficulty of estimating a large covariance matrix and return vector. This can result in adverse performance in portfolio selected based on empirical data due to noise accumulation on estimation errors (Jagannathan and Ma, 2003; Fan, Fan and Lv, 2008). We address this problem by introducing the gross-exposure constrained mean-variance portfolio selection. We show that with gross-exposure constraint the theoretical optimal portfolios have similar performance as empirically selected ones based on estimated covariance matrices and there is no noise accumulation effect from estimation of covariance matrices. This gives theoretical justification to the empirical results

Over the last two decades, many exciting variable selection methods have been developed for finding a small group of covariates that are associated with the response from a large pool. Can the discoveries by such data mining approaches be spurious due to high dimensionality and limited sample size? Can our fundamental assumptions on exogeneity of covariates needed for such variable selection be validated with the data? To answer these questions, we need to derive the distributions of the maximum spurious correlations given certain number of predictors, namely, the distribution of the correlation of a response variable Y with the best s linear combinations of p covariates X, even when X and Y are independent. When the covariance matrix of X possesses the restricted eigenvalue property, we derive such distributions for both finite s and diverging s, using Gaussian approximation and empirical process

<b></b> Estimation of the covariance structure of longitudinal processes is a fundamental prerequisite for the practical deployment of functional mapping designed to study the genetic regulation and network of quantitative variation in dynamic complex traits. We present a nonparametric approach for estimating the covariance structure of a quantitative trait measured repeatedly at a series of time points. Specifically, we adopt Huang et al.'s (2006,<i>Biometrika</i><b>93</b>, 8598) approach of invoking the modified Cholesky decomposition and converting the problem into modeling a sequence of regressions of responses. A regularized covariance estimator is obtained using a normal penalized likelihood with an<i>L</i>₂ penalty. This approach, embedded within a mixture likelihood framework, leads to enhanced accuracy, precision, and flexibility of functional mapping while preserving its biological relevance. Simulation studies are

This article is concerned with feature screening and variable selection for varying coefficient models with ultrahigh-dimensional covariates. We propose a new feature screening procedure for these models based on conditional correlation coefficient. We systematically study the theoretical properties of the proposed procedure, and establish their sure screening property and the ranking consistency. To enhance the finite sample performance of the proposed procedure, we further develop an iterative feature screening procedure. Monte Carlo simulation studies were conducted to examine the performance of the proposed procedures. In practice, we advocate a two-stage approach for varying coefficient models. The two-stage approach consists of (a) reducing the ultrahigh dimensionality by using the proposed procedure and (b) applying regularization methods for dimension-reduced varying coefficient models to make statistical inferences on the coefficient functions. We illustrate the proposed two-stage approach by a real data example. Supplementary materials for this article are available online.