Dynamic Variable Selection with Spike-and-Slab Process Priors (1708.00085v3)

Abstract: We address the problem of dynamic variable selection in time series regression with unknown residual variances, where the set of active predictors is allowed to evolve over time. To capture time-varying variable selection uncertainty, we introduce new dynamic shrinkage priors for the time series of regression coefficients. These priors are characterized by two main ingredients: smooth parameter evolutions and intermittent zeroes for modeling predictive breaks. More formally, our proposed Dynamic Spike-and-Slab (DSS) priors are constructed as mixtures of two processes: a spike process for the irrelevant coefficients and a slab autoregressive process for the active coefficients. The mixing weights are themselves time-varying and depend on lagged values of the series. Our DSS priors are probabilistically coherent in the sense that their stationary distribution is fully known and characterized by spike-and-slab marginals. For posterior sampling over dynamic regression coefficients, model selection indicators as well as unknown dynamic residual variances, we propose a Dynamic SSVS algorithm based on forward-filtering and backward-sampling. To scale our method to large data sets, we develop a Dynamic EMVS algorithm for MAP smoothing. We demonstrate, through simulation and a topical macroeconomic dataset, that DSS priors are very effective at separating active and noisy coefficients. Our fast implementation significantly extends the reach of spike-and-slab methods to large time series data.