Combining Particle Filters with MH Samplers
This chapter argues that in order to conduct Bayesian inference, the approximate likelihood function has to be embedded into a posterior sampler. It begins by combining the particle filtering methods with the MCMC methods, replacing the actual likelihood functions that appear in the formula for the acceptance probability in Algorithm 5 with particle filter approximations. The chapter refers to the resulting algorithm as PFMH algorithm. It is a special case of a larger class of algorithms called particle Markov chain Monte Carlo (PMCMC). The theoretical properties of PMCMC methods were established in Andrieu, Doucet, and Holenstein (2010). Applications of PFMH algorithms in other areas of econometrics are discussed in Flury and Shephard (2011).