On the accuracy and cost of numerical integration in several variables ∗

Identical numerical integration experiments are performed on a CYBER 205 and an IBM 3081 in order to gauge the relative performance of several methods of integration. The methods employed are the general methods of Gauss-Legendre, iterated Gauss-Legendre, Newton-Cotes, Romberg and Monte Carlo as well as three methods, due to Owen, Dutt, and Clark respectively, for integrating the normal density. The bi- and trivariate normal densities and four other functions are integrated; the latter four have integrals expressible in closed form and some of them can be parameterized to exhibit singularities or highly periodic behavior. The various Gauss-Legendre methods tend to be most accurate (when applied to the normal density they are even more accurate than the special purpose methods designed for the normal) and while they are not the fastest, they are at least competitive. In scalar mode the CYBER is about 2-6 times faster than the IBM 3081 and the speed advantage of vectorised to scalar mode ranges from 6 to 15. Large scale econometric problems of the probit type should now be routinely soluble.     

Testing for a change point in a sequence of exponential random variables with repeated values

Two test statistics are proposed for the change-point problem with repeated values when the data follow an exponential distribution. The properties of these two statistics have been studied and their asymptotic distributions under the alternative have been derived. The powers of the two test statistics are compared. Real-data examples are presented to illustrate the application of these tests.     

Uniform Test for Predictive Regression With AR Errors

Testing predictability is of importance in economics and finance. Based on a predictive regression model with independent and identically distributed errors, some uniform tests have been proposed in the literature without distinguishing whether the predicting variable is stationary or nearly integrated. In this article, we extend the empirical likelihood methods of Zhu, Cai, and Peng with independent errors to the case of an AR error process. Again, the proposed new tests do not need to know whether the predicting variable is stationary or nearly integrated, and whether it has a finite variance or an infinite variance. A simulation study shows the new methodologies perform well in finite sample.     

Evidential inference for diffusion-type processes

This article analyses diffusion-type processes from a new point-of-view. Consider two statistical hypotheses on a diffusion process. We do not use a classical test to reject or accept one hypothesis using the Neyman–Pearson procedure and do not involve Bayesian approach. As an alternative, we propose using a likelihood paradigm to characterizing the statistical evidence in support of these hypotheses. The method is based on evidential inference introduced and described by Royall [Royall R. Statistical evidence: a likelihood paradigm. London: Chapman and Hall; 1997]. In this paper, we extend the theory of Royall to the case when data are observations from a diffusion-type process instead of iid observations. The empirical distribution of likelihood ratio is used to formulate the probability of strong, misleading and weak evidences. Since the strength of evidence can be affected by the sampling characteristics, we present a simulation study that demonstrates these effects. Also we try to control misleading evidence and reduce them by adjusting these characteristics. As an illustration, we apply the method to the Microsoft stock prices.     

Time series models with asymmetric Laplace innovations

We propose autoregressive moving average (ARMA) and generalized autoregressive conditional heteroscedastic (GARCH) models driven by asymmetric Laplace (AL) noise. The AL distribution plays, in the geometric-stable class, the analogous role played by the normal in the alpha-stable class, and has shown promise in the modelling of certain types of financial and engineering data. In the case of an ARMA model we derive the marginal distribution of the process, as well as its bivariate distribution when separated by a finite number of lags. The calculation of exact confidence bands for minimum mean-squared error linear predictors is shown to be straightforward. Conditional maximum likelihood-based inference is advocated, and corresponding asymptotic results are discussed. The models are particularly suited for processes that are skewed, peaked, and leptokurtic, but which appear to have some higher order moments. A case study of a fund of real estate returns reveals that AL noise models tend to deliver a superior fit with substantially less parameters than normal noise counterparts, and provide both a competitive fit and a greater degree of numerical stability with respect to other skewed distributions.     

A note on bias reduction of maximum likelihood estimates for the scalar skew t distribution

The skew t distribution is a flexible parametric family to fit data, because it includes parameters that let us regulate skewness and kurtosis. A problem with this distribution is that, for moderate sample sizes, the maximum likelihood estimator of the shape parameter is infinite with positive probability. In order to try to solve this problem, Sartori (2006) has proposed using a modified score function as an estimating equation for the shape parameter. In this note we prove that the resulting modified maximum likelihood estimator is always finite, considering the degrees of freedom as known and greater than or equal to 2.     

BL-GARCH models with elliptical distributed innovations

In this work, we discuss the class of bilinear GARCH (BL-GARCH) models that are capable of capturing simultaneously two key properties of non-linear time series: volatility clustering and leverage effects. It has often been observed that the marginal distributions of such time series have heavy tails; thus we examine the BL-GARCH model in a general setting under some non-normal distributions. We investigate some probabilistic properties of this model and we conduct a Monte Carlo experiment to evaluate the small-sample performance of the maximum likelihood estimation (MLE) methodology for various models. Finally, within-sample estimation properties were studied using S&P 500 daily returns, when the features of interest manifest as volatility clustering and leverage effects. The main results suggest that the Student-t BL-GARCH seems highly appropriate to describe the S&P 500 daily returns.     

Odd-Burr generalized family of distributions with some applications

We study a new family of continuous distributions with two extra shape parameters called the Burr generalized family of distributions. We investigate the shapes of the density and hazard rate function. We derive explicit expressions for some of its mathematical quantities. The estimation of the model parameters is performed by maximum likelihood. We prove the flexibility of the new family by means of applications to two real data sets. Furthermore, we propose a new extended regression model based on the logarithm of the Burr generalized distribution. This model can be very useful to the analysis of real data and provide more realistic fits than other special regression models.     

Empirical Bayes estimation in continuous one-parameter exponential families under associated samples

In this paper, we study the empirical Bayes (EB) estimation in continuous one-parameter exponential families under negatively associated (NA) samples and positively associated (PA) samples. Under certain regularity conditions, it is shown that the convergence rates of proposed EB estimators under NA or PA samples are the same as those of EB estimators under independent observations, which significantly improve the existing results in EB estimation under associated samples.     

Inference for Weibull distribution under adaptive Type-I progressive hybrid censored competing risks data

In this paper, a competing risks model is considered under adaptive type-I progressive hybrid censoring scheme (AT-I PHCS). The lifetimes of the latent failure times have Weibull distributions with the same shape parameter. We investigate the maximum likelihood estimation of the parameters. Bayes estimates of the parameters are obtained based on squared error and LINEX loss functions under the assumption of independent gamma priors. We propose to apply Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) techniques to carry out a Bayesian estimation procedure and in turn calculate the credible intervals. To evaluate the performance of the estimators, a simulation study is carried out.