Bayesian Adaptively Updated Hamiltonian Monte Carlo with an Application to High-Dimensional BEKK GARCH Models

Martin Burda () and John Maheu

Working Paper series from Rimini Centre for Economic Analysis

Abstract: Hamiltonian Monte Carlo (HMC) is a recent statistical procedure to sample from complex distributions. Distant proposal draws are taken in a sequence of steps following the Hamiltonian dynamics of the underlying parameter space, often yielding superior mixing properties of the resulting Markov chain. However, its performance can deteriorate sharply with the degree of irregularity of the underlying likelihood due to its lack of local adaptability in the parameter space. Riemann Manifold HMC (RMHMC), a locally adaptive version of HMC, alleviates this problem, but at a substantially increased computational cost that can become prohibitive in high-dimensional scenarios. In this paper we propose the Adaptively Updated HMC (AUHMC), an alternative inferential method based on HMC that is both fast and locally adaptive, combining the advantages of both HMC and RMHMC. The benefits become more pronounced with higher dimensionality of the parameter space and with the degree of irregularity of the underlying likelihood surface. We show that AUHMC satisfies detailed balance for a valid MCMC scheme and provide a comparison with RMHMC in terms of effective sample size, highlighting substantial efficiency gains of AUHMC. Simulation examples and an application of the BEKK GARCH model show the practical usefulness of the new posterior sampler.

Keywords: High-dimensional joint sampling; Markov chain Monte Carlo (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C01 C11 C15 C32 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2012-06
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ecm, nep-ets and nep-ore
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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Journal Article: Bayesian adaptively updated Hamiltonian Monte Carlo with an application to high-dimensional BEKK GARCH models (2013)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:rim:rimwps:46_12

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