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Piece-wise linear isotonic regression
Working paper   Open access

Piece-wise linear isotonic regression

Timo Kuosmanen, Juan F Monge, José L Ruiz and Xun Zhou
Arxiv
14/05/2026

Abstract

Statistics - Methodology

Isotonic regression provides a flexible, tuning-free approach to estimating monotonic functions without imposing global curvature constraints, yet the estimated regression function is inherently a step function. This paper addresses a key limitation of such estimators: their inability to provide meaningful marginal properties, such as shadow prices or elasticities. We propose a novel piece-wise linear smoothing framework that recovers meaningful marginal estimates even in non-convex settings. Building on the concept of conditional convexity originally developed in deterministic frontier analysis, we formulate the smoothing process as a bilevel optimization problem that fits a continuous, monotonic, piece-wise linear function to the initial isotonic regression predictions. Monte Carlo simulations demonstrate that the proposed approach can significantly improve estimation accuracy in both convex and non-convex settings for univariate and multivariate data. We apply this approach to analyze agglomeration economies in Finnish municipalities, illustrating its practical value.

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Preprint (Author's original) Open Access CC BY V4.0

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