Regularized Regression by Composition: Identifiability, Structured Penalization, and Statistical Guarantees for Multi-Flow Distributional Models

TL;DR

This paper introduces a structured regularization framework for multi-flow distributional models, ensuring identifiability, stability, and interpretability in complex regression settings with theoretical guarantees and practical algorithms.

Contribution

It proposes a novel penalized likelihood approach with flow-specific penalties, establishing identifiability, uniqueness, and asymptotic properties, and demonstrates effectiveness through simulations and real data.

Findings

Regularized methods break non-identifiability and reduce estimation error.

Adaptive Lasso achieves the oracle property under the proposed framework.

Application to NHANES data yields stable, interpretable risk models.

Abstract

Regression by composition provides a flexible framework for constructing conditional distributions through sequential group actions. However, when multiple flows act on the same distribution, the model becomes non-identifiable, leading to flat likelihood regions and unstable estimates. We introduce a structured regularization framework that resolves this issue by assigning flow-specific penalties. The resulting estimator is defined as a penalized maximum likelihood problem with heterogeneous regularization across flows. We establish theoretical properties, including identifiability under penalization, uniqueness of the minimizer via strict convexification, and asymptotic consistency. For the adaptive Lasso, we further prove the oracle property. An efficient proximal gradient algorithm handles non-smooth penalties. Extensive simulation studies evaluate performance under varying sample sizes, correlation structures, and signal-to-noise ratios, demonstrating that regularized methods (Lasso and Elastic Net) successfully break non-identifiability and achieve low estimation error with controlled false positive rates. An application to NHANES data on asthma and lead exposure illustrates the practical utility: the unregularized estimator yields implausible coefficients, whereas regularized estimators produce stable and interpretable models and automatically select the relevant risk transformation. The Labbe plots derived from regularized estimators indicate a protective effect of reducing lead exposure. The proposed framework bridges identifiability theory with penalized estimation and opens the door to high-dimensional and longitudinal extensions.