Continuity of the Distribution Function of the argmax of a Gaussian Process

Matias D. Cattaneo, Gregory Fletcher Cox, Michael Jansson, Kenichi Nagasawa

arXiv 22 Jan 2025 · Econometrics · publishedEconometrica (2026)

arXiv:2501.13265 · PDF · DOI · OpenAlex · Extracted main text

Abstract

An increasingly important class of estimators has members whose asymptotic distribution is non-Gaussian, yet characterizable as the argmax of a Gaussian process. This paper presents high-level sufficient conditions under which such asymptotic distributions admit a continuous distribution function. The plausibility of the sufficient conditions is demonstrated by verifying them in three prominent examples, namely maximum score estimation, empirical risk minimization, and threshold regression estimation. In turn, the continuity result buttresses several recently proposed inference procedures whose validity seems to require a result of the kind established herein. A notable feature of the high-level assumptions is that one of them is designed to enable us to employ the celebrated Cameron-Martin theorem. In a leading special case, the assumption in question is demonstrably weak and appears to be close to minimal.

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