EstemPMM: Polynomial Maximization Method for Non-Gaussian Regression and Time Series in R

TL;DR

The EstemPMM R package implements Polynomial Maximization Method for improved parameter estimation in non-Gaussian regression and time series, outperforming OLS especially with asymmetric or leptokurtic errors.

Contribution

It introduces a unified R package with methods exploiting higher-order cumulants for more accurate estimation in non-Gaussian models, including an automatic dispatch function.

Findings

PMM estimators outperform OLS with asymmetric or leptokurtic errors.

Monte Carlo experiments confirm theoretical efficiency gains.

Case study demonstrates practical benefits on heavy-tailed data.

Abstract

We describe the R package EstemPMM, which implements the Polynomial Maximization Method (PMM) for parameter estimation under non-Gaussian errors. PMM exploits higher-order cumulants of the error distribution -- specifically the third standardized moment gamma_3 and fourth standardized moment gamma_4 -- to construct estimators that outperform ordinary least squares (OLS) whenever the errors are asymmetric or leptokurtic. The package provides a unified interface for linear regression (lm_pmm2, lm_pmm3), autoregressive and moving-average time-series models (ar_pmm2, ma_pmm2, arma_pmm2, arima_pmm2, and seasonal variants), a data-driven dispatch function (pmm_dispatch) that automatically selects OLS, PMM2, or PMM3 based on the sample skewness and excess kurtosis, and Monte Carlo comparison utilities. The implementation uses R's S4 class system and follows standard generic interfaces (coef, fitted, residuals, predict, summary, AIC, logLik, vcov, confint). Asymptotic efficiency is characterised by Kunchenko-style coefficients g_2, g_3 in [0,1], defined as the ratios of the asymptotic variance of the PMM2 and PMM3 estimators to that of OLS. Monte Carlo experiments confirm the theoretical values and a WTI crude-oil case study illustrates the dispatcher and parameter-precision benefits of PMM2 on real heavy-tailed data. EstemPMM version 0.3.2 is available from CRAN at https://CRAN.R-project.org/package=EstemPMM under the GPL-3 licence.