Kernel Recursive ABC: Point Estimation with Intractable Likelihood

02/23/2018

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by   Takafumi Kajihara, et al.

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We propose a novel approach to parameter estimation for simulator-based statistical models with intractable likelihoods. The proposed method is recursive application of kernel ABC and kernel herding to the same observed data. We provide a theoretical explanation regarding why this approach works, showing (for the population setting) that the point estimate obtained with this method converges to the true parameter as recursion proceeds, under a certain assumption. We conduct a variety of numerical experiments, including parameter estimation for a real-world pedestrian flow simulator, and show that our method outperforms existing approaches in most cases.