The variance covariance matrix plays a central role in the inferential theories of high dimensional factor models in finance and economics. Popular regularization methods of directly exploiting sparsity are not directly applicable to many financial problems. Classical methods of estimating the...

This article provides a selective overview of the recent developments in factor models and their applications in econometric learning. We focus on the perspective of the low-rank structure of factor models and particularly draw attention to estimating the model from the low-rank recovery point...

We study factor models augmented by observed covariates that have explanatory powers on the unknown factors. In financial factor models, the unknown factors can be reasonably well explained by a few observable proxies, such as the Fama-French factors. In diffusion index forecasts, identified...

This paper introduces a Projected Principal Component Analysis (Projected-PCA), which is based on the projection of the data matrix onto a given linear space before performing the principal component analysis. When it applies to high-dimensional factor analysis, the projection removes...

This paper provides a selective overview on the recent development of factor models and their applications in econometric learning. We focus on the perspective of the low-rank structure of factor models, and particularly draws attentions to estimating the model from the low-rank recovery point...