Linear regression under log-concave and Gaussian scale mixture errors: comparative study

Gaussian error distributions are a common choice in traditional regression models for the maximum likelihood (ML) method. However, this distributional assumption is often suspicious especially when the error distribution is skewed or has heavy tails. In both cases, the ML method under normality could break down or lose efficiency. In this paper, we consider the log-concave and Gaussian scale mixture distributions for error distributions. For the log-concave errors, we propose to use a smoothed maximum likelihood estimator for stable and faster computation. Based on this, we perform comparative simulation studies to see the performance of coefficient estimates under normal, Gaussian scale mixture, and log-concave errors. In addition, we also consider real data analysis using Stack loss plant data and Korean labor and income panel data.