Trimmed L-moments, were introduced by Elamir and Seheult(2003) to proposed a new estimation method for multi-parameter distributions when the mean doesn't exist or for heavy tailed distribution where the L-moments method which proposed by Hosking (1990) is not valid because the absence of theoretical L-moments. In this paper a new estimation method based on trimmed L-moments of multi-parameter copulas is proposed with a simulation study. The consistency and the asymptotic normality of the new estimator also established.
Research on structure determination and parameter estimation of hierarchical Archimedean copulas (HACs) has so far mostly focused on the case in which all appearing Archimedean copulas belong to the same Archimedean family. The present work addresses this issue and proposes a new approach for estimating HACs that involve different Archimedean families. It is based on employing goodness-of-fit test statistics directly into HAC estimation. The approach is summarized in a simple algorithm, its theoretical justification is given and its applicability is illustrated by several experiments, which in…
One of the features inherent in nested Archimedean copulas, also called hierarchical Archimedean copulas, is their rooted tree structure. A nonparametric, rank-based method to estimate this structure is presented. The idea is to represent the target structure as a set of trivariate structures, each of which can be estimated individually with ease. Indeed, for any three variables there are only four possible rooted tree structures and, based on a sample, a choice can be made by performing comparisons between the three bivariate margins of the empirical distribution of the three variables. The s…
For the analysis of clustered survival data, two different types of models that take the association into account, are commonly used: frailty models and copula models. Frailty models assume that conditional on a frailty term for each cluster, the hazard functions of individuals within that cluster are independent. These unknown frailty terms with their imposed distribution are used to express the association between the different individuals in a cluster. Copula models on the other hand assume that the joint survival function of the individuals within a cluster is given by a copula function, e…
In multiple testing, the family-wise error rate can be bounded under some conditions by the copula of the test statistics. Assuming that this copula is Archimedean, we consider two non-parametric Archimedean generator estimators. More specifically, we use the non-parametric estimator from Genest et al. (2011) and a slight modification thereof. In simulations, we compare the resulting multiple tests with the Bonferroni test and the multiple test derived from the true generator as baselines.
We propose a new test for the hypothesis that a bivariate copula is an Archimedean copula. The test statistic is based on a combination of two measures resulting from the characterization of Archimedean copulas by the property of associativity and by a strict upper bound on the diagonal by the Fréchet-upper bound. We prove weak convergence of this statistic and show that the critical values of the corresponding test can be determined by the multiplier bootstrap method. The test is shown to be consistent against all departures from Archimedeanity if the copula satisfies weak smoothness assumpti…
Looking at bivariate copulas from the perspective of conditional distributions and considering weak convergence of almost all conditional distributions yields the notion of weak conditional convergence. At first glance, this notion of convergence for copulas might seem far too restrictive to be of any practical importance - in fact, given samples of a copula $C$ the corresponding empirical copulas do not converge weakly conditional to $C$ with probability one in general. Within the class of Archimedean copulas and the class of Extreme Value copulas, however, standard pointwise convergence and …
Explicit functional forms for the generator derivatives of well-known one-parameter Archimedean copulas are derived. These derivatives are essential for likelihood inference as they appear in the copula density, conditional distribution functions, or the Kendall distribution function. They are also required for several asymmetric extensions of Archimedean copulas such as Khoudraji-transformed Archimedean copulas. Access to the generator derivatives makes maximum-likelihood estimation for Archimedean copulas feasible in terms of both precision and run time, even in large dimensions. It is shown…
Using the classical estimation method of moments, we propose a new semiparametric estimation procedure for multi-parameter copula models. Consistency and asymptotic normality of the obtained estimators are established. By considering an Archimedean copula model, an extensive simulation study, comparing these estimators with the pseudo maximum likelihood, rho-inversion and tau-inversion ones, is carried out. We show that, with regards to the other methods, the moment based estimation is quick and simple to use with reasonable bias and root mean squared error.
Copula-Stein Discrepancy: A Generator-Based Stein Operator for Archimedean Dependence
Department of Mathematics, University of Louisiana at Lafayette, Lafayette, Louisiana, USA（路易斯安那州拉法叶大学数学系）；Department of Statistics, formerly of Presidency College, Kolkata, India（加德满都大学统计系）
We review the main "omnibus procedures" for goodness-of-fit testing for copulas: tests based on the empirical copula process, on probability integral transformations, on Kendall's dependence function, etc, and some corresponding reductions of dimension techniques. The problems of finding asymptotic distribution-free test statistics and the calculation of reliable p-values are discussed. Some particular cases, like convenient tests for time-dependent copulas, for Archimedean or extreme-value copulas, etc, are dealt with. Finally, the practical performances of the proposed approaches are briefly…
The decreasing enumeration of the points of a Poisson random measure whose mean measure has finite survival function on the positive half-axis can be represented as a non-increasing function of the jump times of a standard Poisson process. This observation allows to generalize the essential idea from a well-known exact simulation algorithm for arbitrary extreme-value copulas to copulas of a more general family of max-infinitely divisible distributions, with reciprocal Archimedean copulas being a particular example.
This research is motivated by discovering and underpinning genetic causes for the progression of a bilateral eye disease, Age-related Macular Degeneration (AMD), of which the primary outcomes, progression times to late-AMD, are bivariate and interval-censored due to intermittent assessment times. We propose a novel class of copula-based semiparametric transformation models for bivariate data under general interval censoring, which includes the case 1 interval censoring (current status data) and case 2 interval censoring. Specifically, the joint likelihood is modeled through a two-parameter Arc…
We propose a flexible copula model to describe changes with a covariate in the dependence structure of (conditionally exchangeable) random variables. The starting point is a spline approximation to the generator of an Archimedean copula. Changes in the dependence structure with a covariate $x$ are modelled by flexible regression of the spline coefficients on $x$. The performances and properties of the spline estimate of the reference generator and the abilities of these conditional models to approximate conditional copulas are studied through simulations. Inference is made using Bayesian argum…
Any nested Archimedean copula is defined starting from a rooted phylogenetic tree, for which a new class of nonparametric estimators is presented. An estimator from this new class relies on a two-step procedure where first a binary tree is built and second is collapsed if necessary to give an estimate of the target tree structure. Several examples of estimators from this class are given and the performance of each of these estimators, as well as of the only known comparable estimator, is assessed by means of a simulation study involving target structures in various dimensions, showing that the…
The copulas of random vectors with standard uniform univariate margins truncated from the right are considered and a general formula for such right-truncated conditional copulas is derived. This formula is analytical for copulas that can be inverted analytically as functions of each single argument. This is the case, for example, for Archimedean and related copulas. The resulting right-truncated Archimedean copulas are not only analytically tractable but can also be characterized as tilted Archimedean copulas. This finding allows one, for example, to more easily derive analytical properties su…
Weak convergence of the empirical copula process is shown to hold under the assumption that the first-order partial derivatives of the copula exist and are continuous on certain subsets of the unit hypercube. The assumption is non-restrictive in the sense that it is needed anyway to ensure that the candidate limiting process exists and has continuous trajectories. In addition, resampling methods based on the multiplier central limit theorem, which require consistent estimation of the first-order derivatives, continue to be valid. Under certain growth conditions on the second-order partial deri…
A large number of commonly used parametric Archimedean copula (AC) families are restricted to a single parameter, connected to a concordance measure such as Kendall's tau. This often leads to poor statistical fits, particularly in the joint tails, and can sometimes even limit the ability to model concordance or tail dependence mathematically. This work suggests outer power (OP) transformations of Archimedean generators to overcome these limitations. The copulas generated by OP-transformed generators can, for example, allow one to capture both a given concordance measure and a tail dependence c…
As a motivating problem, we aim to study some special aspects of the marginal distributions of the order statistics for exchangeable and (more generally) for minimally stable non-negative random variables $T_{1},...,T_{r}$. In any case, we assume that $T_{1},...,T_{r}$ are identically distributed, with a common survival function $\overline{G}$ and their survival copula is denoted by $K$. The diagonal's and subdiagonals' sections of $K$, along with $\overline{G}$, are possible tools to describe the information needed to recover the laws of order statistics. When attention is restricted to the a…
The concept of intermediate tail dependence is useful if one wants to quantify the degree of positive dependence in the tails when there is no strong evidence of presence of the usual tail dependence. We first review existing studies on intermediate tail dependence, and then we report new results to supplement the review. Intermediate tail dependence for elliptical, extreme value and Archimedean copulas are reviewed and further studied, respectively. For Archimedean copulas, we not only consider the frailty model but also the recently studied scale mixture model; for the latter, conditions lea…
Dispersive order is a type of variability order for comparing the variability in probability distributions. Star order compares the skewness of probability distributions. This work considers dispersive and star orders of extreme order statistics from dependent random variables following the proportional odds (PO) model. The joint distribution of the random variables is modeled with Archimedean copula. Numerical examples are provided to illustrate the findings.
So called pair copula constructions (PCCs), specifying multivariate distributions only in terms of bivariate building blocks (pair copulas), constitute a flexible class of dependence models. To keep them tractable for inference and model selection, the simplifying assumption that copulas of conditional distributions do not depend on the values of the variables which they are conditioned on is popular. In this paper, we show for which classes of distributions such a simplification is applicable, significantly extending the discussion of Hobæk Haff et al. (2010). In particular, we show that the …
Copulas are now frequently used to construct or estimate multivariate distributions because of their ability to take into account the multivariate dependence of the different variables while separately specifying marginal distributions. Copula based multivariate models can often also be more parsimonious than fitting a flexible multivariate model, such as a mixture of normals model, directly to the data. However, to be effective, it is imperative that the family of copula models considered is sufficiently flexible. Although finite mixtures of copulas have been used to construct flexible famili…
Copula-based modeling has seen rapid advances in recent years. However, in big data applications, the lengthy computation time for estimating copula parameters is a major difficulty. Here, we develop a novel method to speed computation time in estimating copula parameters, using communication-free parallel computing. Our procedure partitions full data sets into disjoint independent subsets, performs copula parameter estimation on the subsets, and combines the results to produce an approximation to the full data copula parameter. We show in simulation studies that the computation time is greatl…
Independence and Conditional Independence (CI) are two fundamental concepts in probability and statistics, which can be applied to solve many central problems of statistical inference. There are many existing independence and CI measures defined from diverse principles and concepts. In this paper, the 16 independence measures and 16 CI measures were reviewed and then evaluated with simulated and real data. For the independence measures, eight simulated data were generating from normal distribution, normal and Archimedean copula functions to compare the measures in bivariate or multivariate, li…
Copula models have become one of the most widely used tools in the applied modelling of multivariate data. Similarly, Bayesian methods are increasingly used to obtain efficient likelihood-based inference. However, to date, there has been only limited use of Bayesian approaches in the formulation and estimation of copula models. This article aims to address this shortcoming in two ways. First, to introduce copula models and aspects of copula theory that are especially relevant for a Bayesian analysis. Second, to outline Bayesian approaches to formulating and estimating copula models, and their …
This article proposes copula-based dependence quantification between multiple groups of random variables of possibly different sizes via the family of $Phi$-divergences. An axiomatic framework for this purpose is provided, after which we focus on the absolutely continuous setting assuming copula densities exist. We consider parametric and semi-parametric frameworks, discuss estimation procedures, and report on asymptotic properties of the proposed estimators. In particular, we first concentrate on a Gaussian copula approach yielding explicit and attractive dependence coefficients for specific …
We propose a new class of multivariate survival models based on archimedean copulas with margins modeled by the Yang and Prentice (YP) model. The Ali-Mikhail-Haq (AMH), Clayton, Frank, Gumbel-Hougaard (GH), and Joe copulas are employed to accommodate the dependency among marginal distributions. Baseline distributions are modeled semiparametrically by the piecewise exponential (PE) distribution and the Bernstein polynomials. The new class of models possesses some attractive features: i) the ability to take into account survival data with crossing survival curves; ii) the inclusion of the well-k…
