Bayesian Hyper-Lassos With Non-Convex Penalization

The Lasso has sparked interest in the use of penalization of the log-likelihood for variable selection, as well as for shrinkage. We are particularly interested in the more-variables-than-observations case of characteristic importance for modern data. The Bayesian interpretation of the Lasso as the maximum a posteriori estimate of the regression coefficients, which have been given independent, double exponential prior distributions, is adopted. Generalizing this prior provides a family of hyper-Lasso penalty functions, which includes the quasi-Cauchy distribution of Johnstone and Silverman as a special case. The properties of this approach, including the oracle property, are explored, and an EM algorithm for inference in regression problems is described. The posterior is multi-modal, and we suggest a strategy of using a set of perfectly fitting random starting values to explore modes in different regions of the parameter space. Simulations show that our procedure provides significant improvements on a range of established procedures, and we provide an example from chemometrics.