Recent Developments on Factor Models and its Applications in Econometric Learning

This paper provides a selective overview on the recent development of factor models and their applications in econometric learning. We focus on the perspective of the low-rank structure of factor models, and particularly draws attentions to estimating the model from the low-rank recovery point of view. The survey mainly consists of three parts: the first part is a review on new factor estimations based on modern techniques on recovering low-rank structures of high-dimensional models. The second part discusses statistical inferences of several factor-augmented models and applications in statistical learning models. The final part summarizes new developments dealing with unbalanced panels from the matrix completion perspective.