The quest for a good estimator of a certain focus or target is present regardless of the dimensionality of the data. Obtaining such a good estimator with low mean squared error, or a prediction with low prediction error often proceeds via a variable selection or model selection search....

Functional data that are not perfectly aligned in the sense of not showing peaks and valleys at the precise same locations possess phase variation. This is commonly addressed by preprocessing the data via a warping procedure. As opposed to treating phase variation as a nuisance effect, we...

We investigate the performance of various survival analysis techniques applied to ten actual credit data sets from Belgian and UK financial institutions. In the comparison we consider classical survival analysis techniques, namely the accelerated failure time models and Cox proportional hazards...

Recently, Hjort and Claeskens (2003) developed an asymptotic theory for model selection, model averaging and post-model selection/averaging inference using likelihood methods in parametric models, along with associated confidence statements. In this paper, we consider a semiparametric version of...

We propose a new small area estimation approach that combines small area random effects with a smooth, nonparametrically specified trend. By using penalized splines as the representation for the nonparametric trend, it is possible to express the small area estimation problem as a mixed effect...

Mixed models, with both random and fixed effects, are most often estimated on the assumption that the random effects are normally distributed. In this paper we propose several formal tests of the hypothesis that the random effects and/or errors are normally distributed. Most of the proposed...

This paper is about S-estimation for penalized regression splines. Penalized regression splines are one of the currently most used methods for smoothing noisy data. The estimation method used for fitting such a penalized regression spline model is mostly based on least squares methods, which are...

In this paper the interest is in regression analysis for data that show possibly overdispersion or underdispersion. The starting point for modeling are generalized linear models in which we no longer admit a linear form for the mean regression function, but allow it to be any smooth function of...