On Asymptotically Optimal Plug-in Bandwidth Selectors in Kernel Density Estimation

Two data-based bandwidth selectors which are optimal in the sense that they achieve n$\^$-$\frac{1}{2}$/ rate of convergence in kernel density estimation are proposed. The proposed bandwidth selectors are constructed by modifying Park and Marron's plug-in method. The first modification is taking Taylor expansion of the mean integrated squared error to two more terms than in the case of plug-in method. The second is estimating more accurately the functionals of the unknown density appeared in the minimizer of the expansion by using higher order kernels. The proposed bandwidth selectors were proved to be optimal in terms of convergence rate. According to small-sample Monte Carlo studies, the proposed bandwidth selectors showed better performance than all the other bandwidth selectors considered in the simulation.