Statistical methods

Audience

This page assumes working familiarity with applied econometrics (heteroskedasticity-and-autocorrelation-consistent (HAC) SE, false discovery rate (FDR) control, near-unit-root inference). If you are looking for a first-pass orientation to factrix output, start at Quickstart and Concepts; return here when you need the discipline-level rationale behind a specific metric.

Cross-cutting statistical disciplines that govern multiple metrics in factrix. This page sits above the per-metric API pages: it describes the four discipline lines that recur across cells, explains the variant of each that factrix implements, and points at the bibliography anchor for the source treatment.

For per-metric formulae and signatures see the Metrics API pages. For the design choices behind which disciplines factrix does not implement, see Development § Design notes.

The five sections are the only first-class disciplines in factrix:

1. HAC SE under overlapping returns — Newey-West with a deterministic bandwidth rule.
2. Multiple-testing under dependence — Benjamini-Yekutieli FDR, not Bonferroni.
3. Robust scale and outlier handling — MAD-based winsorisation with the consistency factor; Theil-Sen for slope.
4. Persistence diagnostics under near-unit-root predictors — augmented Dickey-Fuller (ADF) flag, no auto-correction.
5. Event-study cross-sectional inference — CAAR cross-event \(t\), BMP-style standardised AR, Corrado rank.

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1. HAC SE under overlapping returns

When forward returns span h > 1 periods, consecutive observations inherit MA(h − 1) structure. Two standard responses, with different trade-offs: Newey-West (NW) HAC corrects SE on the full series at the cost of a kernel choice and asymptotic-Gaussian inference, while non-overlapping sampling preserves an exact-distribution t at the cost of a factor of h in effective sample size. factrix exposes both — non-overlap as the default for cell-canonical metrics, NW HAC as an explicit sibling. When NW HAC is selected, factrix uses the Newey-West 1987 Bartlett kernel with a deterministic bandwidth, applied by ic_newey_west, fama_macbeth, pooled_ols, ts_quantile_spread, and ts_asymmetry.

The bandwidth rule is

\[ L = \max\!\left(\lfloor T^{1/3} \rfloor,\; h - 1\right) \]

with \(h\) = forward_periods. The first term is the Andrews 1991 optimal Bartlett growth rate; the second is the Hansen-Hodrick 1980 overlap floor that ensures the kernel covers the MA(h − 1) structure of overlapping returns. factrix takes the maximum so the bandwidth is always at least large enough to absorb the overlap, with the Andrews term taking over once T is large.

Two choices factrix deliberately did not adopt:

• The data-adaptive plug-in of Newey-West 1994 is not used. Its sampling variability defeats the point of having a reproducible reported SE; the deterministic Andrews rule is adequate at typical research T and is auditable.
• The prewhitening refinement of Andrews-Monahan 1992 is also not used. Same reason: deterministic outputs over marginal efficiency.

The White 1980 HC0 sandwich estimator is the heteroskedasticity-only ancestor of NW and is mentioned in metric docstrings as background, not implemented separately.

For the FM-cell, the NW HAC sits at stage 2 (Fama-MacBeth 1973). When the Stage-1 regressor is itself an estimated quantity (rolling β, PCA score, ML predictor), fama_macbeth(is_estimated_factor=True) applies the Shanken (1992) single-factor case of the errors-in-variables correction, scaling SE by \(\sqrt{1 + \hat\lambda^2 / \sigma^2_f}\) (Shanken's general multi-factor multiplicative term \(1 + \lambda'\Sigma_f^{-1}\lambda\) collapses to \(1 + \hat\lambda^2 / \sigma^2_f\) when there is one factor). The full Shanken variance has an additional \(+\sigma^2_f / T\) term that factrix omits: at finite \(T\) the omission understates the EIV inflation and so overstates the resulting \(t\). The simplification is honest only when \(T\) is large enough that the dropped term is negligible.

When factor_return_var is not supplied, factrix falls back to \(\mathrm{var}(\hat\beta_t)\) as a proxy for \(\sigma^2_f\). Because \(\hat\beta_t\) already absorbs estimation noise from the upstream factor score, this proxy inflates the denominator of the EIV factor and so further deflates the correction. Treat the betas_timeseries_proxy result as a lower bound on the true inflation — i.e. an upper bound on the reported t.

Default versus paired t-test is a separate choice: the cell-canonical metrics (ic, caar) use non-overlapping resampling as the default rather than NW HAC. NW is exposed as an explicit sibling (ic_newey_west) for callers who prefer the HAC route. Resampling has the advantage of exact rather than asymptotic-Gaussian inference at the cost of a factor of h in effective sample size; users with long panels often prefer NW.

NW vs HH-1980 vs Hodrick-1992 — when to use which

The three procedures all target overlap-induced SE distortion but at different points in the bias-variance trade-off:

Procedure	Mechanism	Strengths	Weaknesses	Where factrix uses it
Newey-West (1987)	Bartlett-kernel HAC on the full overlapping series, bandwidth L = max(⌊T^{1/3}⌋, h−1).	Simple, deterministic, asymptotically valid for arbitrary autocorrelation up to L.	Asymptotic Gaussian — finite-sample size distortion when h/T is non-trivial; bandwidth rule is conservative.	ic_newey_west, fama_macbeth stage 2, pooled_ols, ts_quantile_spread, ts_asymmetry.
Hansen-Hodrick (HH) (1980)	A generalized method of moments (GMM)-style HAC estimator with a rectangular kernel truncated at h−1; the canonical reference for overlap-aware long-horizon SEs.	Targets the MA(h−1) residual structure overlap induces.	Rectangular kernel can yield a non-PSD covariance matrix in finite samples; still asymptotic.	Exposed as factrix.stats.HansenHodrick (rectangular-kernel SE → t-statistic → two-sided p-value); also borrows the h−1 lag idea as a floor on the NW bandwidth above.
Hodrick (1992) "1B"	Reverse-regression: regress one-period return on the predictor sum X_t = Σ x_{t-j} over the last h periods.	Size-correct in finite samples even at large h/T; no bandwidth choice.	Coefficient interpretation differs — β is the response to a cumulative-predictor stimulus (MA on the RHS) rather than a long-horizon forecast slope (MA on the LHS in the standard form); not a drop-in replacement for the canonical β.	Not implemented. Cited as the right tool when overlap is severe; the Individual × Continuous cell side-steps the issue with non-overlapping resampling instead.

Practical rule of thumb:

• h ≤ 1: NW with the Andrews rule is fine; the HH-1980 floor is inactive.
• 1 < h, h/T ≤ 0.05: NW + HH-1980 floor is the factrix default; the finite-sample bias is small enough.
• h/T > 0.05: prefer non-overlapping resampling (ic, caar defaults) over NW. If a slope estimate is needed and resampling burns too much sample, Hodrick-1992 1B is the literature-preferred alternative; pre-compute externally.

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2. Multiple-testing under dependence

Canonical reference

For when to use Benjamini-Hochberg-Yekutieli (BHY), family partitioning, and worked screening recipes, see Batch screening (BHY). This section is the underlying theorem and assumptions.

BH / BY / BHY — three names, two procedures

The literature uses three labels that map to two distinct procedures:

• BH — Benjamini & Hochberg (1995). Original FDR step-up; requires independence or positive regression dependence on a subset (PRDS) among the test statistics.
• BY — Benjamini & Yekutieli (2001). Generalises BH to arbitrary dependence by dividing the threshold by \(c(m) = \sum_{i=1}^{m} 1/i\). This is the procedure factrix's multi_factor.bhy() implements mathematically.
• BHY — quant / factor-research shorthand (e.g. Harvey-Liu-Zhu 2016) for the BY-2001 procedure, naming all three authors of the BH/BY lineage. Pure statistics / biostatistics literature (R mutoss, sgof, etc.) uses BY for the same procedure.

factrix follows the quant convention: the function is bhy(), the abbreviation in prose is BHY, the full form on first use is Benjamini-Hochberg-Yekutieli. Paper-citation links ([Benjamini & Yekutieli (2001)][benjamini-yekutieli-2001]) still point at the actual two-author paper because that is the work being cited.

Factor pools are dependent by construction: 200 momentum variants on the same return panel correlate, and a Bonferroni step that assumes independence over-corrects. factrix's multi_factor.bhy wrapper implements Benjamini-Yekutieli 2001 FDR control with the dependence correction \(c(m) = \sum_{i=1}^{m} 1/i\) — valid under arbitrary positive or negative dependence at the cost of a \(1/\ln m\) shrinkage relative to plain Benjamini-Hochberg (BH).

Benjamini-Hochberg 1995 BH is not the default because the typical factor-pool dependence violates its positive regression dependence on a subset (PRDS) assumption; factrix offers BHY as the safe choice and surfaces the adjusted q-values rather than a binary pass/fail at a fixed α.

Three positions on multiple testing that the literature has converged on and factrix takes:

• The Harvey-Liu-Zhu 2016 case for raising t-thresholds is taken seriously. Single-factor pre-registered comparisons default to \(t \geq 2.0\) but exposes the BHY-adjusted q so users can apply a stricter threshold for new factor proposals.
• The Harvey 2017 case against ad-hoc p-hacking is the reason factrix runs registered procedures with fixed pipelines — the lag rule, the sample guards, the resampling stride are not user-tunable per call.
• The White 2000 reality-check and Hansen 2005 SPA family are not implemented. The cost of bootstrap-based data-snooping correction is high relative to the BHY recipe under realistic m, and the empirical disagreement is concentrated in the marginal cases where neither is decisive (see Design notes § BHY rather than Bayesian).

Greedy forward selection (greedy_forward_selection) inflates t-stats by selection and is documented as not for inference. The PoSI literature (Berk-Brown-Buja-Zhang-Zhao 2013, Leeb-Pötscher 2005) gives the rigorous correction; factrix does not implement it because the function is intended as a diagnostic, not a hypothesis test.

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3. Robust scale and outlier handling

factrix preprocesses cross-sectional factor exposures with MAD-based winsorisation: per date, clip values to \(\text{median} \pm k \cdot \mathrm{MAD} \cdot 1.4826\). The \(1.4826\) factor restores Gaussian consistency of the median absolute deviation as a scale estimator (Hampel 1974 is the canonical reference popularising MAD as a scale estimator; textbook treatment in Huber 1981). This avoids letting the same outlier that breaks a sample mean break the scale estimator that gates its treatment.

Theil-Sen slope is used for the trend metric (ic_trend) for the same reason. The estimator computes the median pairwise slope (Sen 1968) and inherits a 29.3% breakdown point; the SE recovered from the rank-based confidence interval is approximate, not asymptotically exact, which is the trade-off factrix accepts in return for not letting a single COVID-era information coefficient (IC) spike dominate the slope.

Two robust-scale choices factrix did not adopt:

• The Sn / Qn estimators of Rousseeuw-Croux 1993 have higher Gaussian efficiency than MAD. The factrix winsorisation pipeline keeps MAD because the small efficiency gain does not justify the extra complexity at the boundaries (Sn / Qn need sorted-pair lookups; MAD is a single median).
• The stationary block bootstrap of Politis-Romano 1994 is cited as the proper way to recover SE under serial dependence when an analytical kernel is not available. factrix's parametric NW HAC is preferred because it is deterministic; the bootstrap is left to external packages (arch).

The influence-function framework that places robust-scale and breakdown-point reasoning on a common conceptual map is Hampel 1974.

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4. Persistence diagnostics under near-unit-root predictors

Predictive regressions with persistent regressors carry the Stambaugh 1999 bias: when the regressor's innovation correlates with the dependent return innovation, ordinary least squares (OLS) \(\hat\beta\) carries a finite-sample bias of order \(O(1/T)\) that does not vanish at conventional research sample sizes (\(\hat\beta\) is consistent asymptotically, but the bias is large enough to flip inference at \(T \approx 10\text{–}30\) years of monthly data). The textbook corrections (Campbell-Yogo 2006 Bonferroni Q, Phillips-Magdalinos 2009 / Kostakis-Magdalinos-Stamatogiannis 2015 IVX) are out of factrix's lean-dependency scope.

factrix's response is flag, do not fix: ic_trend(adf_threshold= 0.10) runs an Augmented Dickey-Fuller test on the input series (Dickey-Fuller 1979, Said-Dickey 1984 ARMA extension). When the ADF p-value exceeds 0.10 — Stock-Watson 1988 practitioner cutoff — the metadata records unit_root_suspected=True and the slope significance is annotated with that caveat. The slope value itself is still returned; the caller decides whether to trust it.

The ADF p-value is interpolated from MacKinnon 1996 response-surface critical values for the constant-only specification (_adf_pvalue_interp). The interpolation accuracy is ±0.03 — ample for the qualitative "is this a unit root" decision the threshold drives.

Overlapping multi-period returns inherit MA(h − 1) autocorrelation (Richardson-Stock 1989), which the NW lag floor in section 1 absorbs. The persistence diagnostic in this section is on the input series itself, not the residual structure captured by HAC.

For per-asset β regressions in compute_ts_betas, factrix deliberately retains plain OLS SE rather than HAC. The Stambaugh bias arises from the predictor's persistence, not from SE estimation, and HAC fixes only the SE while leaving the coefficient bias untouched. Adding HAC there would advertise robustness factrix does not deliver.

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5. Event-study cross-sectional inference

The individual_sparse cell aggregates per-event abnormal returns across assets. Three estimators are exposed, each making a different assumption about the cross-event distribution:

CAAR cross-event t

Default for caar. Per event date, take the cross-sectional mean of \(\text{return} \times \text{factor}\) across event rows; the resulting CAAR series feeds a downstream NW HAC \(t\) on the mean. Specification follows Brown-Warner 1985; the Hansen-Hodrick 1980 overlap floor in §1 governs the NW lag when the event window induces overlap. The test is correctly sized under no event-induced variance; under variance inflation around the event date it is mis-specified — the documented motivation for switching to the BMP-style estimator below.

BMP standardised AR

bmp_test. Standardises each event's abnormal return by its estimation-window standard deviation before taking the cross-event mean, restoring size under event-induced variance (Boehmer-Musumeci-Poulsen 1991). factrix's implementation is a BMP-style simplification: by default it uses mean-adjusted abnormal returns and omits the original BMP prediction-error correction, so results do not match a textbook BMP implementation byte-for-byte. The strict denominator is available via bmp_test(..., include_prediction_error_variance=True) when the textbook form is required.

Corrado nonparametric rank

corrado_rank_test. Replaces returns with their uniform rank within the (estimation ∪ event) window, then runs the cross-event \(t\) on the ranks (Corrado 1989). Robust to extreme returns, non-normality, and cross-asset heteroscedasticity. factrix adds the direction adjustment of Corrado-Zivney 1992 for two-sided signed signals — the rank itself is signed by \(\text{sign}(\text{factor})\) before the cross-event aggregation, not the underlying return.