A Local Influence Approach to Regression Diagnostics with Application to Robust Regression

Regression diagnostics often involves assesment of the changes that result from deleting multiple cases. Diagnostic mehtodology based on global influence measure, however, needs prohibitive computing time. As an alternative, Cook (1986) developed influence approach in which it is checked whether a minor modification of specifiation influences key results of an analysis. In line with Cook's development, we propose and study an inflence derivative method that yields both the magnitude and direction of case influences. The utility of our methodology is highlighted when case influence derivatives are plotted in a lower demensional space. Such plots are especially effective in unmasking "masked" observations in least squares regression and in robust regression also. We give several illustrations.strations.