Comparing variable selection techniques for linear regression: LASSO and Autometrics

In this paper, we compare two different variable selection approaches for linear regression models: Autometrics (automatic general-to-specific selection) and LASSO (ℓ1-norm regularization). In a simulation study, we show the performance of the methods considering the predictive power (forecast out-of-sample) and the selection of the correct model and estimation (in-sample). The case where the number of candidate variables exceeds the number of observation is considered as well. We also analyze the properties of estimators comparing to the oracle estimator. Finally, we compare both methods in an application to GDP forecasting.