Skip to main content
Log in

Moment matching priors

  • Published:
Sankhya A Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

There are various proposals for the selection of the so-called “objective” or “default” priors in Bayesian analysis. The paper introduces a new criterion, the moment matching criterion, which requires the matching of the posterior mean with the maximum likelihood estimator up to a high order of approximation.

A complete characterization of such priors in the one or multi-parameter case is provided. In the process, many new priors are derived. One interesting finding is that even in the absence of nuisance parameters, it is possible to find priors difierent from Jefireys’ prior for a real valued parameter based on our criterion.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Similar content being viewed by others

References

  • Anderson, T.W. (1986). An Introduction to Multivariate Statistical Analysis. 2nd Edition. John Wiley, New York.

    Google Scholar 

  • Bartlett, M.S. (1953). Approximate Confidence Intervals. Biometrika, 40, 12–19.

    MathSciNet  MATH  Google Scholar 

  • Berger, J.O. and Bernardo, J.M. (1989). Estimating a product of means: Bayesian analysis with reference priors. J. Amer. Statist. Assoc., 84, 200–207.

    Article  MathSciNet  MATH  Google Scholar 

  • Berger, J.O. and Bernardo, J.M. (1992a). On the development of the reference priors. Bayesian Statist., 4, 35–60.

    Google Scholar 

  • Berger, J.O. and Bernardo, J.M. (1992b). Ordered group reference priors with application to the multinomial problem. Biometrika, 79, 25–37.

    Article  MathSciNet  MATH  Google Scholar 

  • Berger, J.O. and Sun, D. (2008). Objective priors for the bivariate normal model. Ann. Statist., 36, 963–982.

    Article  MathSciNet  MATH  Google Scholar 

  • Bernardo, J.M. (1979). Reference posterior distributions for Bayesian inference. J. Roy. Statist. Soc. B, 41, 113–147.

    MathSciNet  MATH  Google Scholar 

  • Bickel, P.J. and Ghosh, J.K. (1990). A decomposition for the likelihood ratio statistic and the Bartlett correction — a Bayesian argument. Ann. Statist., 18, 1070–1090.

    Article  MathSciNet  MATH  Google Scholar 

  • Clarke, B. and Barron, A. (1990). Information-theoretic asymptotics of Bayes methods. IEEE Trans. Inform. Theory, 36, 453–471.

    Article  MathSciNet  MATH  Google Scholar 

  • Clarke, B. and Barron, A. (1994). Jefireys’ prior is asymptotically least favorable under entropy risk. J. Statist. Plann. Inference, 41, 37–60.

    Article  MathSciNet  MATH  Google Scholar 

  • Cox, D.R. and Reid, N. (1987). Parameter orthogonality and approximate conditional inferece (with discussion). J. Roy. Statist. Soc. B, 49, 1–39.

    MathSciNet  MATH  Google Scholar 

  • Datta, G.S. and Mukerjee, R. (2004). Probability Matching Priors: Higher Order Asymptotics. Springer, New York.

    Book  MATH  Google Scholar 

  • Datta, G.S. and Ghosh, J.K. (1995a). On priors providing frequentist validity in Bayesian inference. Biometrika, 82, 37–45.

    Article  MathSciNet  MATH  Google Scholar 

  • Datta, G.S. and Ghosh, J.K. (1995b). Noninformative priors for maximal invariant parameter in group models. Test, 4, 95–114.

    Article  MathSciNet  MATH  Google Scholar 

  • Datta, G.S. and Ghosh, M. (1995c). Some remarks on noninformative priors. J. Amer. Statist. Assoc., 90, 1357–1363.

    Article  MathSciNet  MATH  Google Scholar 

  • Datta, G.S. and Ghosh, M. (1996). On the invariance of noninformative priors. Ann. Statist., 24, 141–159.

    Article  MathSciNet  MATH  Google Scholar 

  • Datta, G.S., Rao, J.N.K. and Smith, D.D. (2005). On measuring the variability of small area estimators under a basic area level model. Biometrika, 92, 183–196.

    Article  MathSciNet  MATH  Google Scholar 

  • Eaton, M.L. and Sudderth, W. D. (2004). Properties of right Haar predictive inference. Sankhya, 66, 487–512.

    MathSciNet  MATH  Google Scholar 

  • Ferguson, T.S. (1967). Mathmetical Statistics: A Decision-Theoretic Approach. Academic Press, New York.

    Google Scholar 

  • Ganesh, N. and Lahiri, P. (2008). A new class of average moment matching priors. Biometrika, 95, 514–520.

    Article  MathSciNet  MATH  Google Scholar 

  • Ghosh, J.K. (1994). Higher Order Asymptotics. NSF-CBMS Regional Conference Series in Probability and Statistics, Volume 4. Institute of Mathematical Statistics, Hayward, California.

    MATH  Google Scholar 

  • Ghosh, J.K. and Mukerjee, R. (1992). Non-informative priors (with discussion). In Bayesian Statistics 4, (J.M. Bernardo, J.O. Berger, A.P. Dawid and A.F.M. Smith, eds.), 195–210. Oxford University Press, New York.

    Google Scholar 

  • Ghosh, J.K. Delampady, M. and Samanta, T. (2006). An Introduction to Bayesian Analysis. Springer, New York.

    MATH  Google Scholar 

  • Ghosh, J.K. Sinha, B.K. and Joshi, S.N. (1982). Expansion for posterior probability and integrated Bayes risk. In Statistical Decision Theory and Related Topics III, 1, (S.S. Gupta and J.O. Berger, eds.), 403–456. Academic Press, New York.

    Google Scholar 

  • Ghosal, S. (1999). Probability matching priors for non-regular cases. Biometrika, bf 86, 956–964.

    Article  MathSciNet  MATH  Google Scholar 

  • Hartigan, J.A. (1964). Invariant prior densities. Ann. Math. Statist., 35, 836–845.

    Article  MathSciNet  MATH  Google Scholar 

  • Hartigan, J.A. (1998). The maximum likelihood prior. Ann. Statist., 26, 2083–2103.

    Article  MathSciNet  MATH  Google Scholar 

  • Jeffreys, H. (1961). Theory of Probability. (3rd edition.) Clarendon Press, Oxford.

    MATH  Google Scholar 

  • Johson, R.A. (1970). Asymptotic expansions associated with posterior distribution. Ann. Math. Statist., 41, 851–864.

    Article  MathSciNet  Google Scholar 

  • Jorgensen, B. (1997). The Theory of Dispersion Models. Chapman and Hall, New York.

    Google Scholar 

  • Lindley, D.V. (1956). On the measure of the information provided by an experiment. Ann. Math. Statist., 27, 986–1005.

    Article  MathSciNet  MATH  Google Scholar 

  • Mukerjee, R. and Dey, D.K. (1993). Frequentist validity of posterior quantiles in the presence of a nuisance parameter: Higher order asymptotics. Biometrika, 80, 499–505.

    Article  MathSciNet  MATH  Google Scholar 

  • Peers, H.W. (1965). On confidence sets and Bayesian probability points in the case of several parameters. J. Roy. Statist. Soc. B, 27, 9–16.

    MathSciNet  MATH  Google Scholar 

  • Severini, T. A., Mukerjee, R. and Ghosh, M. (2002). On an exact probability matching property of right-invariant priors. Biometrika, 89, 952–957.

    Article  MathSciNet  MATH  Google Scholar 

  • Stein, C. (1985). On the coverage probability of confidence sets based on a prior distribution. In Sequential Methods in Statistics, (R. Zielinski, ed.), 485–514. Banach Center Publications, 16. Polish Scientific Publishers, Warsaw.

    Google Scholar 

  • Sweeting, T.J. (2008). On predictive probability matching priors. In Pushing the Limits of Contemporary Statistics: Contributions in Honor of Jayanta K. Ghosh, (B. Clarke and S. Ghoshal, eds.), 46–59. Institute of Mathematical Statistics Collections, 3. Institute of Mathematical Statistics, Beachwood.

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  • Tibishirani, R.J. (1989). Noninformative priors for one parameter of many. Biometrika, 76, 604–608.

    Article  MathSciNet  Google Scholar 

  • Welch, B.L. and Peers, H.W. (1963). On formulae for confidence points based on integrals of weighted likelihood. J. Roy. Statist. Soc. B, 25, 318–329.

    MathSciNet  MATH  Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Malay Ghosh.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Cite this article

Ghosh, M., Liu, R. Moment matching priors. Sankhya A 73, 185–201 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13171-011-0012-2

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Revised:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s13171-011-0012-2

AMS (2000) subject classification

Keywords and phrases

Navigation