Strategic choices for efficient and accurate evaluation of marginal likelihoods by means of Monte Carlo simulation methods are studied for the case of highly non-elliptical posterior distributions. A comparative analysis is presented of possible advantages and limitations of different simulation...

This discussion paper led to a publication in 'Computational Statistics & Data Analysis' 56(11), pp. 3398-1414.Important choices for efficient and accurate evaluation of marginal likelihoods by means of Monte Carlo simulation methods are studied for the case of highly non-elliptical posterior...

Divergent priors are improper when defined on unbounded supports. Bartlett's paradox has been taken to imply that using improper priors results in ill-defined Bayes factors, preventing model comparison by posterior probabilities. However many improper priors have attractive properties that...

We develop a new class of prior distributions for Bayesian comparison of nested models, which we call intrinsic moment priors, by combining the well-established notion of intrinsic prior with the recently introduced idea of non-local priors, and in particular of moment priors. Specifically, we...

We analyze the general (multiallelic) Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium problem from an objective Bayesian testing standpoint. We argue that for small or moderate sample sizes the answer is rather sensitive to the prior chosen, and this suggests to carry out a sensitivity analysis with respect to the...

The implementation of the Bayesian paradigm to model comparison can be problematic. In particular, prior distributions on the parameter space of each candidate model require special care. While it is well known that improper priors cannot be used routinely for Bayesian model comparison, we claim...

We propose an objective Bayesian method for the comparison of all Gaussian directed acyclic graphical models defined on a given set of variables. The method, which is based on the notion of fractional Bayes factor, requires a single default (typically improper) prior on the space of...

Consider a probability model P θ,α , where θ=(θ 1 ,θ 2 ,…,θ k ) T is a parameter vector of interest, and α is some nuisance parameter. The problem of testing null hypothesis H 0 : θ 1 =θ 2 =…=θ k against selecting one of k alternative hypotheses H i :θ i =θ [ k ] θ [1] , i...

Abstract For many decades, statisticians have made attempts to prepare the Bayesian omelette without breaking the Bayesian eggs; that is, to obtain probabilistic likelihood-based inferences without relying on informative prior distributions. A recent example is Murray Aitkin´s recent book,...