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Threshold regression models are useful for identifying subgroups with heterogeneous parameters. The conventional threshold regression models split the sample based on a single and observed threshold variable, which enforces the threshold point to be equal for all subgroups of the population. In this paper, we consider a more flexible single-index threshold model in the quantile regression setup, in which the sample is split based on a linear combination of predictors. We propose a new estimator by smoothing the indicator function in thresholding, which enables Gaussian approximation for statistical inference and allows characterizing the limiting distribution when the quantile process is interested. We further construct a mixed-bootstrap inference method with faster computation and a procedure for testing the constancy of the threshold parameters across quantiles. Finally, we demonstrate the value of the proposed methods via simulation studies, as well as through the application to an executive compensation data.

This article considers high-dimensional image-on-scalar regression, where the spatial heterogeneity of covariate effects on imaging responses is investigated via a flexible partially linear spatial...

The estimation of extreme conditional quantiles is an important issue in numerous disciplines. Quantile regression (QR) provides a natural way to capture the covariate effects at different tails of the response distribution. However, without any distributional assumptions, estimation from conventional QR is often unstable at the tails, especially for heavy-tailed distributions due to data sparsity. In this article, we develop a new three-stage estimation procedure that integrates QR and extreme value theory by estimating intermediate conditional quantiles using QR and extrapolating these estimates to tails based on extreme value theory. Using the power-transformed QR, the proposed method allows more flexibility than existing methods that rely on the linearity of quantiles on the original scale, while extending the applicability of parametric models to borrow information across covariates without resorting to nonparametric smoothing. In addition, we propose a test procedure to assess the commonality of ext...

Estimation of conditional quantiles at very high or low tails is of interest in numerous applications. Quantile regression provides a convenient and natural way of quantifying the impact of covariates at different quantiles of a response distribution. However, high tails are often associated with data sparsity, so quantile regression estimation can suffer from high variability at tails especially for heavy-tailed distributions. In this article, we develop new estimation methods for high conditional quantiles by first estimating the intermediate conditional quantiles in a conventional quantile regression framework and then extrapolating these estimates to the high tails based on reasonable assumptions on tail behaviors. We establish the asymptotic properties of the proposed estimators and demonstrate through simulation studies that the proposed methods enjoy higher accuracy than the conventional quantile regression estimates. In a real application involving statistical downscaling of daily precipitation in...

We develop a new multiple imputation approach for M-regression models with censored covariates. Instead of specifying parametric likelihoods, our method imputes the censored covariates by their conditional quantiles given the observed data, where the conditional quantiles are estimated through fitting a censored quantile regression process. The resulting estimator is shown to be consistent and asymptotically normal, and it improves the estimation efficiency by using information from cases with censored covariates. Compared with existing methods, the proposed method is more flexible as it does not require stringent parametric assumptions on the distributions of either the regression errors or the covariates. The finite sample performance of the proposed method is assessed through a simulation study and the analysis of a c-reactive protein dataset in the 2007–2008 National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey. This article has supplementary material online.

Censored quantile regression offers a valuable supplement to Cox proportional hazards model for survival analysis. Existing work in the literature often requires stringent assumptions, such as unconditional independence of the survival time and the censoring variable or global linearity at all quantile levels. Moreover, some of the work uses recursive algorithms, making it challenging to derive asymptotic normality. To overcome these drawbacks, we propose a new locally weighted censored quantile regression approach that adopts the redistribution-of-mass idea and employs a local reweighting scheme. Its validity only requires conditional independence of the survival time and the censoring variable given the covariates, and linearity at the particular quantile level of interest. Our method leads to a simple algorithm that can be conveniently implemented with R software. Applying recent theory of M-estimation with infinite dimensional parameters, we establish the consistency and asymptotic normality of the pr...