A Bayesian “Sandwich” for Variance Estimation

Abstract

Large-sample Bayesian analogs exist for many frequentist methods, but are less well known for the widely-used “sandwich” or “robust” variance estimators. We review existing approaches to Bayesian analogs of sandwich variance estimators and propose a new analog, as the Bayes rule under a form of balanced loss function, that combines elements of standard parametric inference with fidelity of the data to the model. Our development is general, for essentially any regression setting with independent outcomes. Being the large-sample equivalent of its frequentist counterpart, we show by simulation that Bayesian robust standard error estimates can faithfully quantify the variability of parameter estimators even under model misspecification—thus retaining the major attraction of the original frequentist version. We demonstrate our Bayesian analog of standard error estimates when studying the association between age and systolic blood pressure in NHANES.