On Kendall-Ressel and related distributions

We delineate a connection of Kendall-Ressel and related laws with the lower real branch of Lambert W function. A characterization of the canonical member of Kendall-Ressel class is found. The Letac-Mora interpretation of the reciprocity of two specific NEFs is extended by considering two related reproductive EDMs. A local limit theorem on gamma convergence for the reproductive back-shifted Kendall-Ressel EDM is derived. Each member of this EDM is self-decomposable and unimodal, but not strongly unimodal. The coefficient of variation, skewness and kurtosis of each representative of this EDM are higher than the corresponding measures for the members of gamma and inverse Gaussian EDMs. An integral representation for the lower real branch of Lambert W function is given.     

Asymptotics of random contractions

In this paper we discuss the asymptotic behaviour of random contractions X=RS, where R, with distribution function F, is a positive random variable independent of S∈(0,1). Random contractions appear naturally in insurance and finance. Our principal contribution is the derivation of the tail asymptotics of X assuming that F is in the max-domain of attraction of an extreme value distribution and the distribution function of S satisfies a regular variation property. We apply our result to derive the asymptotics of the probability of ruin for a particular discrete-time risk model. Further we quantify in our asymptotic setting the effect of the random scaling on the Conditional Tail Expectations, risk aggregation, and derive the joint asymptotic distribution of linear combinations of random contractions.     

Convergence to type I distribution of the extremes of sequences defined by random difference equation

We study the extremes of a sequence of random variables (R_n) defined by the recurrence R_n=M_nR_n−1+q, n≥1, where R₀ is arbitrary, (M_n) are iid copies of a non-degenerate random variable M, 0≤M≤1, and q>0 is a constant. We show that under mild and natural conditions on M the suitably normalized extremes of (R_n) converge in distribution to a double-exponential random variable. This partially complements a result of de Haan, Resnick, Rootzén, and de Vries who considered extremes of the sequence (R_n) under the assumption that P(M>1)>0.     

Conditional limiting distribution of Type III elliptical random vectors

In this paper we consider elliptical random vectors in R^d,d≥2 with stochastic representation RAU where R is a positive random radius independent of the random vector U which is uniformly distributed on the unit sphere of R^d and A∈R^d×d is a non-singular matrix. When R has distribution function in the Weibull max-domain of attraction we say that the corresponding elliptical random vector is of Type III. For the bivariate set-up, Berman [Sojurns and Extremes of Stochastic Processes, Wadsworth & Brooks/ Cole, 1992] obtained for Type III elliptical random vectors an interesting asymptotic approximation by conditioning on one component. In this paper we extend Berman's result to Type III elliptical random vectors in R^d. Further, we derive an asymptotic approximation for the conditional distribution of such random vectors.     

Regularly varying multivariate time series

Extreme values of a stationary, multivariate time series may exhibit dependence across coordinates and over time. The aim of this paper is to offer a new and potentially useful tool called tail process to describe and model such extremes. The key property is the following fact: existence of the tail process is equivalent to multivariate regular variation of finite cuts of the original process. Certain remarkable properties of the tail process are exploited to shed new light on known results on certain point processes of extremes. The theory is shown to be applicable with great ease to stationary solutions of stochastic autoregressive processes with random coefficient matrices, an interesting special case being a recently proposed factor GARCH model. In this class of models, the distribution of the tail process is calculated by a combination of analytical methods and a novel sampling algorithm.     

Estimating cumulative incidence functions when the life distributions are constrained

In competing risks studies, the Kaplan-Meier estimators of the distribution functions (DFs) of lifetimes and the corresponding estimators of cumulative incidence functions (CIFs) are used widely when no prior information is available for these distributions. In some cases better estimators of the DFs of lifetimes are available when they obey some inequality constraints, e.g., if two lifetimes are stochastically or uniformly stochastically ordered, or some functional of a DF obeys an inequality in an empirical likelihood estimation procedure. If the restricted estimator of a lifetime differs from the unrestricted one, then the usual estimators of the CIFs will not add up to the lifetime estimator. In this paper we show how to estimate the CIFs in this case. These estimators are shown to be strongly uniformly consistent. In all cases we consider, when the inequality constraints are strict the asymptotic properties of the restricted and the unrestricted estimators are the same, thus providing the asymptotic properties of the restricted estimators essentially “free of charge”. We give an example to illustrate our procedure.     

A Central Limit Theorem for isotropic flows

We establish that the image of a measure, which satisfies a certain energy condition, moving under a standard isotropic Brownian flow will, when properly scaled, have an asymptotically normal distribution under almost every realization of the flow. We derive the same result for an initial point mass moved by an isotropic Kraichnan flow.     

Tail behavior of random products and stochastic exponentials

In this paper we study the distributional tail behavior of the solution to a linear stochastic differential equation driven by infinite variance α$\alpha$-stable Lévy motion. We show that the solution is regularly varying with index α$\alpha$. An important step in the proof is the study of a Poisson number of products of independent random variables with regularly varying tail. The study of these products merits its own interest because it involves interesting saddle-point approximation techniques.     

On the Dirichlet problem

A particular case of the Dirichlet problem is solved using the Convergence Theorem for discrete-time martingales and the mean value property of harmonic functions as the main tools.     

Stationary max-stable processes with the Markov property

We prove that the class of discrete time stationary max-stable process satisfying the Markov property is equal, up to time reversal, to the class of stationary max-autoregressive processes of order 1. A similar statement is also proved for continuous time processes.     

Meta densities and the shape of their sample clouds

This paper compares the shape of the level sets for two multivariate densities. The densities are positive and continuous, and have the same dependence structure. The density f is heavy-tailed. It decreases at the same rate-up to a positive constant-along all rays. The level sets {f>c} for c↓0, have a limit shape, a bounded convex set. We transform each of the coordinates to obtain a new density g with Gaussian marginals. We shall also consider densities g with Laplace, or symmetric Weibull marginal densities. It will be shown that the level sets of the new light-tailed density g also have a limit shape, a bounded star-shaped set. The boundary of this set may be written down explicitly as the solution of a simple equation depending on two positive parameters. The limit shape is of interest in the study of extremes and in risk theory, since it determines how the extreme observations in different directions relate. Although the densities f and g have the same copula-by construction-the shapes of the level sets are not related. Knowledge of the limit shape of the level sets for one density gives no information about the limit shape for the other density.     

Limit distribution of the sum and maximum from multivariate Gaussian sequences

In this paper we study the asymptotic joint behavior of the maximum and the partial sum of a multivariate Gaussian sequence. The multivariate maximum is defined to be the coordinatewise maximum. Results extend univariate results of McCormick and Qi. We show that, under regularity conditions, if the maximum has a limiting distribution it is asymptotically independent of the partial sum. We also prove that the maximum of a stationary sequence, when normalized in a special sense which includes subtracting the sample mean, is asymptotically independent of the partial sum (again, under regularity conditions). The limiting distributions are also obtained.     

On the asymptotic behaviour of Lévy processes,Part I: Subexponential and exponential processes

We study tail probabilities of the suprema of Lévy processes with subexponential or exponential marginal distributions over compact intervals. Several of the processes for which the asymptotics are studied here for the first time have recently become important to model financial time series. Hence our results should be important, for example, in the assessment of financial risk.     

An invariance principle for stationary random fields under Hannan’s condition

We establish an invariance principle for a general class of stationary random fields indexed by Z^d${\mathbb{Z}}^d$, under Hannan’s condition generalized to Z^d${\mathbb{Z}}^d$. To do so we first establish a uniform integrability result for stationary orthomartingales, and second we establish a coboundary decomposition for certain stationary random fields. At last, we obtain an invariance principle by developing an orthomartingale approximation. Our invariance principle improves known results in the literature, and particularly we require only finite second moment.     

An intermediate Baum-Katz theorem

We extend the classical Hsu-Robbins-Erd?s theorem to the case when all moments exist, but the moment generating function does not, viz., we assume that Eexp{(log⁺|X|)^α}<∞ for some α>1. We also present multi-index versions of the same and of a related result due to Lanzinger in which the assumption is that Eexp{|X|^α}<∞ for some α∈(0,1).     

Renewal theory with a trend

We prove some analogs of results from renewal theory for random walks in the case when there is a drift, more precisely when the mean of the kth summand equals k^γμ, k≥1, for some μ>0 and 0<γ≤1.     

On exceedances of high levels

The distribution of the excess process describing heights of extreme values can be approximated by the distribution of a Poisson cluster process. An estimate of the accuracy of such an approximation has been derived in [4] in terms of the Wasserstein distance. The paper presents a sharper estimate established in terms of the stronger total variation distance. We derive also a new bound to the accuracy of negative Binomial approximation to the distribution of the number of exceedances.     

Asymptotic distributions of maxima of complete and incomplete samples from multivariate stationary Gaussian sequences

Let be a sequence of d-dimensional stationary Gaussian vectors, and let denote the partial maxima of . Suppose that there are missing data in each component of and let denote the partial maxima of the observed variables. In this note, we study two kinds of asymptotic distributions of the random vector where the correlation and cross-correlation satisfy some dependence conditions.