Misspecification Analysis of High-Dimensional Random Effects Models for Estimation of Signal-to-Noise Ratios

Abstract: Estimation of signal-to-noise ratios and residual variances in high-dimensional linear models has various important applications including, e.g. heritability estimation in bioinformatics. One commonly used estimator, usually referred to as REML, is based on the likelihood of the random effects model, in which both the regression coefficients and the noise variables are respectively assumed to be i.i.d Gaussian random variables. In this paper, we aim to establish the consistency and asymptotic distribution of the REML estimator for the SNR, when the actual coefficient vector is fixed, and the actual noise is heteroscedastic and correlated, at the cost of assuming the entries of the design matrix are independent and skew-free. The asymptotic variance can be also consistently estimated when the noise is heteroscedastic but uncorrelated. Extensive numerical simulations illustrate our theoretical findings and also suggest some assumptions imposed in our theoretical results are likely relaxable.