Abstract
An effective bandwidth selection method for local linear regression is proposed in Fan and Gijbels [1995, J. Roy. Statist. Soc. Ser. B, 57, 371-394]. The method is based on the idea of the pre-asymptotic substitution and has been tested extensively. This paper investigates the rate of convergence of this method. In particular, we show that the relative rate of convergence is of order n -2/7 if the locally cubic fitting is used in the pilot stage, and the rate of convergence is n -2/5 when the local polynomial of degree 5 is used in the pilot fitting. The study also reveals a marked difference between the bandwidth selection for nonparametric regression and that for density estimation: The plug-in approach for the latter case can admit the root-n rate of convergence while for the former case the best rate is of order n -2/5 . © 1999 Elsevier Science B.V.