Multiplicative deconvolution under unknown error distribution

We consider a multiplicative deconvolution problem, in which the density or the survival function of a strictly positive random variable is estimated nonparametrically based on an i.i.d. sample from a noisy observation of . The multiplicative measurement error is supposed to be independent of . The objective of this work is to construct a fully data-driven estimation procedure when the error density is unknown. We assume that in addition to the i.i.d. sample from , we have at our disposal an additional i.i.d. sample drawn independently from the error distribution. The proposed estimation procedure combines the estimation of the Mellin transformation of the density and a regularisation of the inverse of the Mellin transform by a spectral cut-off. The derived risk bounds and oracle-type inequalities cover both - the estimation of the density as well as the survival function . The main issue addressed in this work is the data-driven choice of the cut-off parameter using a model selection approach. We discuss conditions under which the fully data-driven estimator can attain the oracle-risk up to a constant without any previous knowledge of the error distribution. We compute convergences rates under classical smoothness assumptions. We illustrate the estimation strategy by a simulation study with different choices of distributions.
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