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The Surprising Robustness of Partial Least Squares

João B. Assunção, Pedro Afonso Fernandes

arXiv 9 Sep 2024 · Econometrics

arXiv:2409.05713 · PDF · DOI · OpenAlex · Extracted main text

Abstract

Partial least squares (PLS) is a simple factorisation method that works well with high dimensional problems in which the number of observations is limited given the number of independent variables. In this article, we show that PLS can perform better than ordinary least squares (OLS), least absolute shrinkage and selection operator (LASSO) and ridge regression in forecasting quarterly gross domestic product (GDP) growth, covering the period from 2000 to 2023. In fact, through dimension reduction, PLS proved to be effective in lowering the out-of-sample forecasting error, specially since 2020. For the period 2000-2019, the four methods produce similar results, suggesting that PLS is a valid regularisation technique like LASSO or ridge.

Citation extraction

22
references
35
in-text mentions
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distinct cited
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appendix boundary found by appendix_titled_section at “Appendix” · 83% of the source is main text. Read the extracted text to check this.

Most heavily cited references

The works this paper leans on most, across its whole bibliography — not restricted to papers in our corpus. Ranked by composite intensity, which combines how often a work is mentioned, how many sections mention it, and how much of that falls in the main text rather than the appendix.

ReferenceIntensityMentionsSectionsMain text
1H. R. Varian (2014) Big Data: New Tricks for Econometrics0.92843100%
2M. Taddy (2019) Business Data Science: Combining Machine Learning and Economics to Optimize, Automate and Accelerate Business Decisions0.87452100%
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4F. Petropoulos, D. Apiletti, V. Assimakopoulos, M. Z. Babai, D. K. B… (2021) Forecasting: theory and practice0.64422100%
5A. Belloni, V. Chernozhukov, and C. Hansen (2014) High-Dimensional Methods and Inference on Structural and Treatment Effects0.58531100%
6H. Abdi (2003) Partial Least Squares (PLS) Regression0.40511100%
7J. B. Assuncão and P. A. Fernandes (2022) Nowcasting GDP: An Application to Portugal self0.40511100%
8C. Bergmeir, R. J. Hyndman, and B. Koo (2017) A note on the validity of cross-validation for evaluating autoregressive time series prediction0.40511100%
9B. Bok, D. Caratelli, D. Giannone, A. M. Sbordone, and A. Tambalotti (2018) Macroeconomic Nowcasting and Forecasting with Big Data0.40511100%
10J. H. Friedman, T. Hastie, and R. Tibshirani (2000) Additive Logistic Regression; A Statistical View of Boosting0.40511100%

Showing the top 10 of 22 scored citations.