We develop a modified Gaussian factor model for the purpose of inducing predictor-dependent shrinkage for linear regression. The new model predicts well across a wide range of covariance structures, on real and simulated data. Furthermore, the new model facilitates variable selection in the case...

We introduce and exemplify an efficient method for direct sampling from hyper-inverse Wishart distributions. The method relies very naturally on the use of standard junction-tree representation of graphs, and couples these with matrix results for inverse Wishart distributions. We describe the...

This paper proposes a new approach to sparsity, called the horseshoe estimator, which arises from a prior based on multivariate-normal scale mixtures. We describe the estimator's advantages over existing approaches, including its robustness, adaptivity to different sparsity patterns and...

Transaction costs limit the supply of credit to small and medium-sized firms (SMEs). From a sample of 65,535 SME credit proposals submitted to a large Brazilian bank between January 2004 and September 2006, this research analyzes credit granting decisions. Results suggest that small firms face...