  We consider a general nonparametric regression model called the compound
model. It includes, as special cases, sparse additive regression and
nonparametric (or linear) regression with many covariates but possibly a small
number of relevant covariates. The compound model is characterized by three
main parameters: the structure parameter describing the "macroscopic" form of
the compound function, the "microscopic" sparsity parameter indicating the
maximal number of relevant covariates in each component and the usual
smoothness parameter corresponding to the complexity of the members of the
compound. We find non-asymptotic minimax rate of convergence of estimators in
such a model as a function of these three parameters. We also show that this
rate can be attained in an adaptive way.
