We study the weak convergence of conditional empirical copula processes, when the conditioning event has a nonzero probability. The validity of several bootstrap schemes is stated, including the exchangeable bootstrap. We define general - possibly conditional - multivariate dependence measures and their estimators. By applying our theoretical results, we prove the asymptotic normality of some estimators of such dependence measures.
The copula representations for conditionally independent random variables and the distribution properties of order statistics of these random variables are studied.
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 …
The partial copula provides a method for describing the dependence between two random variables $X$ and $Y$ conditional on a third random vector $Z$ in terms of nonparametric residuals $U_1$ and $U_2$. This paper develops a nonparametric test for conditional independence by combining the partial copula with a quantile regression based method for estimating the nonparametric residuals. We consider a test statistic based on generalized correlation between $U_1$ and $U_2$ and derive its large sample properties under consistency assumptions on the quantile regression procedure. We demonstrate thro…
The empirical beta copula is a simple but effective smoother of the empirical copula. Because it is a genuine copula, from which, moreover, it is particularly easy to sample, it is reasonable to expect that resampling procedures based on the empirical beta copula are expedient and accurate. In this paper, after reviewing the literature on some bootstrap approximations for the empirical copula process, we first show the asymptotic equivalence of several bootstrapped processes related to the empirical copula and empirical beta copula. Then we investigate the finite-sample properties of resamplin…
A broad class of smooth, possibly data-adaptive nonparametric copula estimators that contains empirical Bernstein copulas introduced by Sancetta and Satchell (and thus the empirical beta copula proposed by Segers, Sibuya and Tsukahara) is studied. Within this class, a subclass of estimators that depend on a scalar parameter determining the amount of marginal smoothing and a functional parameter controlling the shape of the smoothing region is specifically considered. Empirical investigations of the influence of these parameters suggest to focus on two particular data-adaptive smooth copula est…
We present a new non-parametric estimator of the conditional density of the kernel type. It is based on an efficient transformation of the data by quantile transform. By use of the copula representation, it turns out to have a remarkable product form. We study its asymptotic properties and compare its bias and variance to competitors based on nonparametric regression.
The empirical copula process plays a central role for statistical inference on copulas. Recently, Segers (2011) investigated the asymptotic behavior of this process under non-restrictive smoothness assumptions for the case of i.i.d. random variables. In the present paper we extend his main result to the case of serial dependent random variables by means of the powerful and elegant functional delta method. Moreover, we utilize the functional delta method in order to obtain conditional consistency of certain bootstrap procedures. Finally, we extend the results to the more general sequential empi…
We propose a new goodness-of-fit test for copulas, based on empirical copula processes and their nonparametric bootstrap counterparts. The standard Kolmogorov-Smirnov type test for copulas that takes the supremum of the empirical copula process indexed by half spaces is extended by test statistics based on the supremum of the empirical copula process indexed by partitions of Ln rectangles with Ln slowly tending to infinity. Although the underlying empirical process does not converge, it is proved that the p-values of our new test statistic can be consistently estimated by the bootstrap. Simula…
The empirical copula process plays a central role in the asymptotic analysis of many statistical procedures which are based on copulas or ranks. Among other applications, results regarding its weak convergence can be used to develop asymptotic theory for estimators of dependence measures or copula densities, they allow to derive tests for stochastic independence or specific copula structures, or they may serve as a fundamental tool for the analysis of multivariate rank statistics. In the present paper, we establish weak convergence of the empirical copula process (for observations that are all…
For multivariate distributions in the domain of attraction of a max-stable distribution, the tail copula and the stable tail dependence function are equivalent ways to capture the dependence in the upper tail. The empirical versions of these functions are rank-based estimators whose inflated estimation errors are known to converge weakly to a Gaussian process that is similar in structure to the weak limit of the empirical copula process. We extend this multivariate result to continuous functional data by establishing the asymptotic normality of the estimators of the tail copula, uniformly over…
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…
Several procedures have been recently proposed to test the simplifying assumption for conditional copulas. Instead of considering pointwise conditioning events, we study the constancy of the conditional dependence structure when some covariates belong to general borelian conditioning subsets. Several test statistics based on the equality of conditional Kendall's tau are introduced, and we derive their asymptotic distributions under the null. When such conditioning events are not fixed ex ante, we propose a data-driven procedure to recursively build such relevant subsets. It is based on decisio…
We investigate the validity of two resampling techniques when carrying out inference on the underlying unknown copula using a recently proposed class of smooth, possibly data-adaptive nonparametric estimators that contains empirical Bernstein copulas (and thus the empirical beta copula). Following \cite{KirSegTsu21}, the first resampling technique is based on drawing samples from the smooth estimator and can only can be used in the case of independent observations. The second technique is a smooth extension of the so-called sequential dependent multiplier bootstrap and can thus be used in a ti…
Continuation refers to the operation by which the cumulative distribution function of a discontinuous random vector is made continuous through multilinear interpolation. The copula that results from the application of this technique to the classical empirical copula is either called the multilinear or the checkerboard copula. As shown by Genest and Nešlehová (Astin Bull. 37 (2007) 475-515) and Nešlehová (J. Multivariate Anal. 98 (2007) 544-567), this copula plays a central role in characterizing dependence concepts in discrete random vectors. In this paper, the authors establish the asymptotic…
The paper considers the problem of establishing data support for the simplifying assumption (SA) in a bivariate conditional copula model. It is known that SA greatly simplifies the inference for a conditional copula model, but standard tools and methods for testing SA tend to not provide reliable results. After splitting the observed data into training and test sets, the method proposed will use a flexible training data Bayesian fit to define tests based on randomization and standard asymptotic theory. Theoretical justification for the method is provided and its performance is studied using si…
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…
This paper considers the efficient estimation of copula-based semiparametric strictly stationary Markov models. These models are characterized by nonparametric invariant (one-dimensional marginal) distributions and parametric bivariate copula functions where the copulas capture temporal dependence and tail dependence of the processes. The Markov processes generated via tail dependent copulas may look highly persistent and are useful for financial and economic applications. We first show that Markov processes generated via Clayton, Gumbel and Student's $t$ copulas and their survival copulas are…
The core of the classical block maxima method consists of fitting an extreme value distribution to a sample of maxima over blocks extracted from an underlying series. In asymptotic theory, it is usually postulated that the block maxima are an independent random sample of an extreme value distribution. In practice however, block sizes are finite, so that the extreme value postulate will only hold approximately. A more accurate asymptotic framework is that of a triangular array of block maxima, the block size depending on the size of the underlying sample in such a way that both the block size a…
Two key ingredients to carry out inference on the copula of multivariate observations are the empirical copula process and an appropriate resampling scheme for the latter. Among the existing techniques used for i.i.d. observations, the multiplier bootstrap of Rémillard and Scaillet (J. Multivariate Anal. 100 (2009) 377-386) frequently appears to lead to inference procedures with the best finite-sample properties. Bücher and Ruppert (J. Multivariate Anal. 116 (2013) 208-229) recently proposed an extension of this technique to strictly stationary strongly mixing observations by adapting the depe…
A pair-copula construction is a decomposition of a multivariate copula into a structured system, called regular vine, of bivariate copulae or pair-copulae. The standard practice is to model these pair-copulae parametrically, which comes at the cost of a large model risk, with errors propagating throughout the vine structure. The empirical pair-copula proposed in the paper provides a nonparametric alternative still achieving the parametric convergence rate. It can be used as a basis for inference on dependence measures, for selecting and pruning the vine structure, and for hypothesis tests conc…
Quantile regression, that is the prediction of conditional quantiles, has steadily gained importance in statistical modeling and financial applications. The authors introduce a new semiparametric quantile regression method based on sequentially fitting a likelihood optimal D-vine copula to given data resulting in highly flexible models with easily extractable conditional quantiles. As a subclass of regular vine copulas, D-vines enable the modeling of multivariate copulas in terms of bivariate building blocks, a so-called pair-copula construction (PCC). The proposed algorithm works fast and acc…
In the field of finance, insurance, and system reliability, etc., it is often of interest to measure the dependence among variables by modeling a multivariate distribution using a copula. The copula models with parametric assumptions are easy to estimate but can be highly biased when such assumptions are false, while the empirical copulas are non-smooth and often not genuine copula making the inference about dependence challenging in practice. As a compromise, the empirical Bernstein copula provides a smooth estimator but the estimation of tuning parameters remains elusive. In this paper, by u…
The replacement of indicator functions by integrated beta kernels in the definition of the empirical stable tail dependence function is shown to produce a smoothed version of the latter estimator with the same asymptotic distribution but superior finite-sample performance. The link of the new estimator with the empirical beta copula enables a simple but effective resampling scheme.
The present contribution derives an explicit expression for (a version of) every uni- and multi-variate conditional distribution (i.e., Markov kernel) of Archimedean copulas and uses this representation to generalize a recently established result, saying that in the class of multivariate Archimedean copulas standard uniform convergence implies weak convergence of almost all univariate Markov kernels, to arbitrary multivariate Markov kernels. Moreover, we prove that an Archimedean copula is singular if, and only if, almost all uni- and multivariate Markov kernels are singular. These results are…
Recent financial disasters have emphasised the need to accurately predict extreme financial losses and their consequences for the institutions belonging to a given financial market. The ability of econometric models to predict extreme events strongly relies on their flexibility to account for the highly nonlinear and asymmetric dependence observed in financial returns. We develop a new class of flexible Copula models where the evolution of the dependence parameters follow a Markov-Switching Generalised Autoregressive Score (SGASC) dynamics. Maximum Likelihood estimation is consistently perform…
We discuss the so-called "simplifying assumption" of conditional copulas in a general framework. We introduce several tests of the latter assumption for non- and semiparametric copula models. Some related test procedures based on conditioning subsets instead of point-wise events are proposed. The limiting distribution of such test statistics under the null are approximated by several bootstrap schemes, most of them being new. We prove the validity of a particular semiparametric bootstrap scheme. Some simulations illustrate the relevance of our results.
In this paper, we find necessary and sufficient conditions so that copula-based conditional distributions of a response variable with respect to covariates, are ordered with respect to the simple stochastic order introduced by Lehmann. These conditions do not depend on the marginal distributions of the random variables. As a result, we have conditions to ensure that the conditional mean and conditional quantiles are monotonic with respect to the covariates.
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…
A new class of copulas based on order statistics was introduced by Baker (2008). Here, further properties of the bivariate and multivariate copulas are described, such as that of likelihood ratio dominance (LRD), and further bivariate copulas are introduced that generalize the earlier work. One of the new copulas is an integral of a product of Bessel functions of imaginary argument, and can attain the Fréchet bound. The use of these copulas for fitting data is described, and illustrated with examples. It was found empirically that the multivariate copulas previously proposed are not flexible e…
School of Statistics and Actuarial Science, University of the Witwatersrand（统计学与精算科学学院，威特沃特斯兰德大学）；Department of Mathematics, Alioune Diop University of Bambey（数学系，班贝阿里乌恩·迪奥普大学）
In this paper we review Bernstein and grid-type copulas for arbitrary dimensions and general grid resolutions in connection with discrete random vectors possessing uniform margins. We further suggest a pragmatic way to fit the dependence structure of multivariate data to Bernstein copulas via grid-type copulas and empirical contingency tables. Finally, we discuss a Monte Carlo study for the simulation and PML estimation for aggregate dependent losses form observed windstorm and flooding data.
When the copula of the conditional distribution of two random variables given a covariate does not depend on the value of the covariate, two conflicting intuitions arise about the best possible rate of convergence attainable by nonparametric estimators of that copula. In the end, any such estimator must be based on the marginal conditional distribution functions of the two dependent variables given the covariate, and the best possible rates for estimating such localized objects is slower than the parametric one. However, the invariance of the conditional copula given the value of the covariate…
We propose a new method to test conditional independence of two real random variables $Y$ and $Z$ conditionally on an arbitrary third random variable $X$. %with $F_{.|.}$ representing conditional distribution functions, The partial copula is introduced, defined as the joint distribution of $U=F_{Y|X}(Y|X)$ and $V=F_{Z|X}(Z|X)$. We call this transformation of $(Y,Z)$ into $(U,V)$ the partial copula transform. It is easy to show that if $Y$ and $Z$ are continuous for any given value of $X$, then $Y\ind Z|X$ implies $U\ind V$. Conditional independence can then be tested by (i) applying the partia…
The empirical copula has proved to be useful in the construction and understanding of many statistical procedures related to dependence within random vectors. The empirical beta copula is a smoothed version of the empirical copula that enjoys better finite-sample properties. At the core lie fundamental results on the weak convergence of the empirical copula and empirical beta copula processes. Their scope of application can be increased by considering weighted versions of these processes. In this paper we show weak convergence for the weighted empirical beta copula process. The weak convergenc…
Given a sample from a multivariate distribution $F$, the uniform random variates generated independently and rearranged in the order specified by the componentwise ranks of the original sample look like a sample from the copula of $F$. This idea can be regarded as a variant on Baker's [J. Multivariate Anal. 99 (2008) 2312--2327] copula construction and leads to the definition of the empirical beta copula. The latter turns out to be a particular case of the empirical Bernstein copula, the degrees of all Bernstein polynomials being equal to the sample size. Necessary and sufficient conditions ar…
We provide the strong approximation of empirical copula processes by a Gaussian process. In addition we establish a strong approximation of the smoothed empirical copula processes and a law of iterated logarithm.
Conditions are given under which the empirical copula process associated with a random sample from a bivariate continuous distribution has a smaller asymptotic covariance function than the standard empirical process based on observations from the copula. Illustrations are provided and consequences for inference are outlined.
Given a random sample from a continuous multivariate distribution, Stute's representation is obtained for empirical copula processes constructed from a broad class of smooth, possibly data-adaptive nonparametric copula estimators. The latter class contains for instance empirical Bernstein copulas introduced by Sancetta and Satchell and thus the empirical beta copula proposed by Segers, Sibuya and Tsukahara. The almost sure rate in Stute's representation is expressed in terms of a parameter controlling the speed at which the spread of the smoothing region decreases as the sample size increases.
We consider multivariate copula-based stationary time-series under Gaussian subordination. Observed time series are subordinated to long-range dependent Gaussian processes and characterized by arbitrary marginal copula distributions. First of all, we establish limit theorems for the marginal and quantile marginal empirical processes of multivariate stationary long-range dependent sequences under Gaussian subordination. Furthermore, we establish the asymptotic behavior of sequential empirical copula processes under non-restrictive smoothness assumptions. The limiting processes in the case of lo…
Weak convergence of the empirical copula process indexed by a class of functions is established. Two scenarios are considered in which either some smoothness of these functions or smoothness of the underlying copula function is required. A novel integration by parts formula for multivariate, right continuous functions of bounded variation, which is perhaps of independent interest, is proved. It is a key ingredient in proving weak convergence of a general empirical process indexed by functions of bounded variation.
Our goal in this paper is to propose an alternative risk measure which takes into account the fluctuations of losses and possible correlations between random variables. This new notion of risk measures, that we call Copula Conditional Tail Expectation describes the expected amount of risk that can be experienced given that a potential bivariate risk exceeds a bivariate threshold value, and provides an important measure for right-tail risk. An application to real financial data is given.
For the problem of estimating lower tail and upper tail copulas, we propose two bootstrap procedures for approximating the distribution of the corresponding empirical tail copulas. The first method uses a multiplier bootstrap of the empirical tail copula process and requires estimation of the partial derivatives of the tail copula. The second method avoids this estimation problem and uses multipliers in the two-dimensional empirical distribution function and in the estimates of the marginal distributions. For both multiplier bootstrap procedures, we prove consistency. For these investigations,…
