A Robust Semi-Parametric Test for Detecting Trait-Dependent Diversification

A Robust Semi-Parametric Test for Detecting Trait-Dependent Diversification.

Rates of species diversification vary widely across the tree of life and there is considerable interest in identifying organismal traits that correlate with rates of speciation and extinction. However, it has been challenging to develop methodological frameworks for testing hypotheses about trait-dependent diversification that are robust to phylogenetic pseudoreplication and to directionally bi...

Robust Lorenz Curves: A Semi-Parametric Approach

Lorenz curves and second-order dominance criteria are known to be sensitive to data contamination in the right tail of the distribution. We propose two ways of dealing with the problem: (1) Estimate Lorenz curves using parametric models for income distributions, and (2) Combine empirical estimation with a parametric (robust) estimation of the upper tail of the distribution using the Pareto mode...

Detecting Hidden Diversification Shifts in Models of Trait-Dependent Speciation and Extinction.

The distribution of diversity can vary considerably from clade to clade. Attempts to understand these patterns often employ state-dependent speciation and extinction models to determine whether the evolution of a particular novel trait has increased speciation rates and/or decreased extinction rates. It is still unclear, however, whether these models are uncovering important drivers of diversif...

Problems detecting density-dependent diversification on phylogenies.

A Robust Semi-parametric Inference of Dynamic Discrete Games1

Zhengyuan Gao This paper considers the dynamic discrete game model with fixed points in the worst case and with incomplete beliefs. In the worst case, an -approximation to a fixed point does not lead to the consistent second step estimator of the parametric structural parameters. Given certain structures of the value function, we propose an alternative two-step inference algorithm. The first st...