When can weak latent factors be statistically inferred?
何时能够对弱潜在因子开展统计推断?
This article establishes a new and comprehensive estimation and inference theory for principal component analysis (PCA) under the weak factor model that allow for cross-sectional dependent idiosyncratic components under the nearly minimal factor strength relative to the noise level or signal-to-noise ratio. Our theory is applicable regardless of the relative growth rate between the cross-sectional dimension $N$ and temporal dimension $T$. This more realistic assumption and…