Summary. A fairly general procedure is studied to perturb a multivariate density satisfying a weak form of multivariate symmetry, and to generate a whole set of non-symmetric densities. The approach is sufficiently general to encompass some recent proposals in the literature, variously related to the skew normal distribution. The special case of skew elliptical densities is examined in detail, establishing connections with existing similar work. The final part of the paper specializes further to a form of multivariate skew t-density. Likelihood inference for this distribution is examined, and it is illustrated with numerical examples.

Distributions generated by perturbation of symmetry with emphasis on a multivariate skew t‐distribution

A fairly general procedure is studied to perturbate a multivariate density satisfying a weak form of multivariate symmetry, and to generate a whole set of non-symmetric densities. The approach is general enough to encompass a number of recent proposals in the literature, variously related to the skew normal distribution. The special case of skew elliptical densities is examined in detail, establishing connections with existing similar work. The final part of the paper specializes further to a form of multivariate skew $t$ density. Likelihood inference for this distribution is examined, and it is illustrated with numerical examples.

Distributions generated by perturbation of symmetry with emphasis on a multivariate skew $t$ distribution

The authors develop a new class of distributions by introducing skewness in multivariate ellip- tically symmetric distributions. The class, which is obtained by using transformation and conditioning, contains many standard families including the multivariate skew-normal and distributions. The authors obtain analytical forms of the densities and study distributional properties. They give practical applica- tions in Bayesian regression models and results on the existence of the posterior distributions and moments under improper priors for the regression coefficients. They illustrate their methods using practical examples.

/pdf/a-new-class-of-multivariate-skew-distributions-with-3tjo80vwcj.pdf

A new class of multivariate skew distributions with applications to Bayesian regression models

A multivariate skew normal distribution

Consider starting from a symmetric distributionF on ℜ and generating a family of distributions from it by employing two parameters whose role is to introduce skewness and to vary tail weight. The proposal in this paper is a simple generalisation of the use of the collection of order statistic distributions associated withF for this purpose; an alternative derivation of this family of distributions is as the result of applying the inverse probability integral transformation to the beta distribution. General properties of the proposed family of distributions are explored. It is argued that two particular special cases are especially attractive because they appear to provide the most tractable instances of families with power and exponential tails; these are the skewt distribution and the logF distribution, respectively. Limited experience with fitting the distributions to data in their four-parameter form, with location and scale parameters added, is described, and hopes for their incorporation into complex modelling situations expressed. Extensions to the multivariate case and to ℜ+ are discussed, and links are forged between the distributions underlying the skewt and logF distributions and Tadikamalla and Johnson'sLU family.

Families of distributions arising from distributions of order statistics

The univariate skew-normal distribution was introduced by Azzalini in 1985 as a natural extension of the classical normal density to accommodate asymmetry. He extensively studied the properties of this distribution and in conjunction with coauthors, extended this class to include the multivariate analog of the skew-normal. Arnold et al. (1993) introduced a more general skew-normal distribution as the marginal distribution of a truncated bivariate normal distribution in whichX was retained only ifY satisfied certain constraints. Using this approach more general univariate and multivariate skewed distributions have been developed. A survey of such models is provided together with discussion of related inference questions.

A. Bhaumik

Papers

Skewed multivariate models related to hidden truncation and/or selective reporting