Empirical Likelihood with Generative AI

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Li, Jiguang, Kankanala, Sid, Rockova, Veronika
Format: Preprint
Published: 2026
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author Li, Jiguang
Kankanala, Sid
Rockova, Veronika
author_facet Li, Jiguang
Kankanala, Sid
Rockova, Veronika
contents Moment conditions are widely used to identify parameters in models where the full likelihood is either unknown or intentionally left unspecified. Empirical likelihood methods address this problem by assigning probability weights to the observed data so that the sample moment conditions hold exactly. Building on this idea, we propose a nonparametric Bayesian framework based on exponentially tilted empirical likelihood. This Bayesian formulation is particularly appealing in settings where prior information is more naturally specified on the observables rather than on the underlying parameters. Such settings arise in the presence of auxiliary data sources or synthetic data generated by modern generative AI models.Inference proceeds by projecting posterior draws from a Dirichlet process onto the moment-restricted model, yielding a computationally efficient procedure that is naturally amenable to parallelization. We establish new Bernstein--von Mises and consistency theorems for the resulting projection posterior under both vanishing-prior and persistent-prior regimes. In an application to return prediction using overnight news headlines, we show that AI-generated auxiliary data can provide a useful source of indirect regularization when informative priors on the parameter itself are unavailable.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2606_00425
institution arXiv
publishDate 2026
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Empirical Likelihood with Generative AI
Li, Jiguang
Kankanala, Sid
Rockova, Veronika
Methodology
Machine Learning
Moment conditions are widely used to identify parameters in models where the full likelihood is either unknown or intentionally left unspecified. Empirical likelihood methods address this problem by assigning probability weights to the observed data so that the sample moment conditions hold exactly. Building on this idea, we propose a nonparametric Bayesian framework based on exponentially tilted empirical likelihood. This Bayesian formulation is particularly appealing in settings where prior information is more naturally specified on the observables rather than on the underlying parameters. Such settings arise in the presence of auxiliary data sources or synthetic data generated by modern generative AI models.Inference proceeds by projecting posterior draws from a Dirichlet process onto the moment-restricted model, yielding a computationally efficient procedure that is naturally amenable to parallelization. We establish new Bernstein--von Mises and consistency theorems for the resulting projection posterior under both vanishing-prior and persistent-prior regimes. In an application to return prediction using overnight news headlines, we show that AI-generated auxiliary data can provide a useful source of indirect regularization when informative priors on the parameter itself are unavailable.
title Empirical Likelihood with Generative AI
topic Methodology
Machine Learning
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2606.00425