Entity Ranking with Covariates and Sparse Intrinsic Scores

This paper addresses the item ranking problem with associated covariates, focusing on scenarios where the preference scores can not be fully explained by covariates, and the remaining intrinsic scores are sparse. Specifically, we extend the pioneering Bradley-Terry-Luce (BTL) model by incorporating covariate information and considering sparse individual intrinsic scores. Our work introduces novel model identification conditions and examines the statistical rates of the regularized penalized Maximum Likelihood Estimator (MLE). We then construct a debiased estimator for the penalized MLE and analyze its distributional properties. Additionally, we apply our method to the goodness-of-fit test for models with no latent intrinsic scores, namely, the covariates fully explaining the preference scores of individual items. We also offer confidence intervals for ranks. Our numerical studies lend further support to our theoretical findings, demonstrating validation for our proposed method.