On blest's measure of rank correlation

Blest (2000) proposed a new nonparametric measure of correlation between two random variables. His coefficient, which is dissymmetric in its arguments, emphasizes discrepancies observed among the first ranks in the orderings induced by the variables. The authors derive the limiting distribution of Blest's index and suggest symmetric variants whose merits as statistics for testing independence are explored using asymptotic relative efficiency calculations and Monte Carlo simulations.     

A Simulation Study of the Powers of Three Multiple Comparison Statistics

A normal-theory and two distribution-free statistics used for multiple comparisons of homogeneity of location are compared on simulated data generated from six distributions. The normal-theory statistic is found to be fairly robust to departures from the assumption of normally distributed data of the types considered. The Steel-Dwass statistic is generally more powerful than a Kruskal-Wallis range statistic.     

ASYMPTOTIC TESTS FOR THE CONTINUOUS TIME MARKOV BRANCHING PROCESS WITH IMMIGRATION

This paper presents limit distributions for the modified score and the likelihood-ratio (LR) statistic for testing a composite hypothesis involving the split intensity and mean of the offspring distribution of the supercritical continuous time Markov branching process allowing immigration (CBPI). The immigration intensity and mean are treated as nuisance parameters.     

New Simple Tests for Panel Cointegration

In this paper, two new simple residual-based panel data tests are proposed for the null of no cointegration. The tests are simple because they do not require any correction for the temporal dependencies of the data. Yet they are able to accommodate individual specific short-run dynamics, individual specific intercept and trend terms, and individual specific slope parameters. The limiting distributions of the tests are derived and are shown to be free of nuisance parameters. The Monte Carlo results in this paper suggest that the asymptotic results are borne out well even in very small samples.     

Adaptive choice of scale tests in flexible two-stage designs with applications in experimental ecology and clinical trials

In this paper, the two-sample scale problem is addressed within the rank framework which does not require to specify the underlying continuous distribution. However, since the power of a rank test depends on the underlying distribution, it would be very useful for the researcher to have some information on it in order to use the possibly most suitable test. A two-stage adaptive design is used with adaptive tests where the data from the first stage are used to compute a selector statistic to select the test statistic for stage 2. More precisely, an adaptive scale test due to Hall and Padmanabhan and its components are considered in one-stage and several adaptive and non-adaptive two-stage procedures. A simulation study shows that the two-stage test with the adaptive choice in the second stage and with Liptak combination, when it is not more powerful than the corresponding one-stage test, shows, however, a quite similar power behavior. The test procedures are illustrated using two ecological applications and a clinical trial.     

Testing the equality of variance-covariance matrices the robust way

The robust statistic T² _Dproposed by Tiku and Singh (1982) for testing the equality of mean vectors of two mu1 t ivariate populations is modified to test the equality of variance-covariance matrices.     

Testing Predictive Ability and Power Robustification

One of the approaches to compare forecasting methods is to test whether the risk from a benchmark prediction is smaller than the others. The test can be embedded into a general problem of testing inequality constraints using a one-sided sup functional. Hansen showed that such tests suffer from asymptotic bias. This article generalizes this observation, and proposes a hybrid method to robustify the power properties by coupling a one-sided sup test with a complementary test. The method can also be applied to testing stochastic dominance or moment inequalities. Simulation studies demonstrate that the new test performs well relative to the existing methods. For illustration, the new test was applied to analyze the forecastability of stock returns using technical indicators employed by White.     

On a theorem of graybill

Graybill (1976) gives a theorem for testing variance components in balanced random models. Unfortunately, the theorem does not hold true. We pin down the reason that causes the theorem to fail and give a correct version of it.     

Bayesian tests for matched proportions

A sample of n subjects is observed in each of two states, S₁-and S₂. In each state, a subject is in one of two conditions, X or Y. Thus, a subject may be recorded as showing a change if its condition in the two states is ‘Y,X’ or ‘X,Y’ and, otherwise, the condition is unchanged. We consider a Bayesian test of the null hypothesis that the probability of an ‘X,Y’ change exceeds that of a ‘Y,X’ change by amount k_O. That is, we develop the posterior distribution of k_O, the difference between the two probabilities and reject the null hypothesis if k lies outside the appropriate posterior probability interval. The performance of the method is assessed by Monte Carlo and other numerical studies and brief tables of exact critical values are presented     

Business Cycle Asymmetries

Tests for business cycle asymmetries are developed for Markov-switching autoregressive models. The tests of deepness, steepness, and sharpness are Wald statistics, which have standard asymptotics. For the standard two-regime model of expansions and contractions, deepness is shown to imply sharpness (and vice versa), whereas the process is always nonsteep. Two and three-state models of U.S. GNP growth are used to illustrate the approach, along with models of U.S. investment and consumption growth. The robustness of the tests to model misspecification, and the effects of regime-dependent heteroscedasticity, are investigated.