Testing for additivity with B-splines

Regression splines are often used for fitting nonparametric functions, and they work especially well for additivity models. In this paper, we consider two simple tests of additivity: an adaptation of Tukey’s one degree of freedom test and a nonparametric version of Rao’s score test. While the Tukey-type test can detect most forms of the local non-additivity at the parametric rate of O(n-1/2), the score test is consistent for all alternative at a nonparametric rate. The asymptotic distribution of these test statistics is derived under both the null and local alternative hypotheses. A simulation study is conducted to compare their finite-sample performances with some existing kernel-based tests. The score test is found to have a good overall performance.