Convergence of Probability Measures. By P. Billingsley. Chichester, Sussex, Wiley, 1968. xii, 253 p. 9 1/4“. 117s.

Convergence of Probability Measures

Subjectivism has become the dominant philosophical foundation for Bayesian inference. Yet in practice, most Bayesian analyses are performed with so-called “noninformative” priors, that is, priors constructed by some formal rule. We review the plethora of techniques for constructing such priors and discuss some of the practical and philosophical issues that arise when they are used. We give special emphasis to Jeffreys's rules and discuss the evolution of his viewpoint about the interpretation of priors, away from unique representation of ignorance toward the notion that they should be chosen by convention. We conclude that the problems raised by the research on priors chosen by formal rules are serious and may not be dismissed lightly: When sample sizes are small (relative to the number of parameters being estimated), it is dangerous to put faith in any “default” solution; but when asymptotics take over, Jeffreys's rules and their variants remain reasonable choices. We also provide an annotated b...

The Selection of Prior Distributions by Formal Rules

A comprehensive account of economic size distributions around the world and throughout the years In the course of the past 100 years, economists and applied statisticians have developed a remarkably diverse variety of income distribution models, yet no single resource convincingly accounts for all of these models, analyzing their strengths and weaknesses, similarities and differences. Statistical Size Distributions in Economics and Actuarial Sciences is the first collection to systematically investigate a wide variety of parametric models that deal with income, wealth, and related notions. Christian Kleiber and Samuel Kotz survey, compliment, compare, and unify all of the disparate models of income distribution, highlighting at times a lack of coordination between them that can result in unnecessary duplication. Considering models from eight languages and all continents, the authors discuss the social and economic implications of each as well as distributions of size of loss in actuarial applications. Specific models covered include: Pareto distributions Lognormal distributions Gamma-type size distributions Beta-type size distributions Miscellaneous size distributions Three appendices provide brief biographies of some of the leading players along with the basic properties of each of the distributions. Actuaries, economists, market researchers, social scientists, and physicists interested in econophysics will find Statistical Size Distributions in Economics and Actuarial Sciences to be a truly one-of-a-kind addition to the professional literature.

Statistical Size Distributions in Economics and Actuarial Sciences

Weak Convergence and Empirical Processes - A. W. van der Vaart; J. A. Wellner.

1 Introduction.- 2 Experiments, Deficiencies, Distances v.- 2.1 Comparing Risk Functions.- 2.2 Deficiency and Distance between Experiments.- 2.3 Likelihood Ratios and Blackwell's Representation.- 2.4 Further Remarks on the Convergence of Distri butions of Likelihood Ratios.- 2.5 Historical Remarks.- 3 Contiguity - Hellinger Transforms.- 3.1 Contiguity.- 3.2 Hellinger Distances, Hellinger Transforms.- 3.3 Historical Remarks.- 4 Gaussian Shift and Poisson Experiments.- 4.1 Introduction.- 4.2 Gaussian Experiments.- 4.3 Poisson Experiments.- 4.4 Historical Remarks.- 5 Limit Laws for Likelihood Ratios.- 5.1 Introduction.- 5.2 Auxiliary Results.- 5.2.1 Lindeberg's Procedure.- 5.2.2 Levy Splittings.- 5.2.3 Paul Levy's Symmetrization Inequalities.- 5.2.4 Conditions for Shift-Compactness.- 5.2.5 A Central Limit Theorem for Infinitesimal Arrays.- 5.2.6 The Special Case of Gaussian Limits.- 5.2.7 Peano Differentiable Functions.- 5.3 Limits for Binary Experiments.- 5.4 Gaussian Limits.- 5.5 Historical Remarks.- 6 Local Asymptotic Normality.- 6.1 Introduction.- 6.2 Locally Asymptotically Quadratic Families.- 6.3 A Method of Construction of Estimates.- 6.4 Some Local Bayes Properties.- 6.5 Invariance and Regularity.- 6.6 The LAMN and LAN Conditions.- 6.7 Additional Remarks on the LAN Conditions.- 6.8 Wald's Tests and Confidence Ellipsoids.- 6.9 Possible Extensions.- 6.10 Historical Remarks.- 7 Independent, Identically Distributed Observations.- 7.1 Introduction.- 7.2 The Standard i.i.d. Case: Differentiability in Quadratic Mean.- 7.3 Some Examples.- 7.4 Some Nonparametric Considerations.- 7.5 Bounds on the Risk of Estimates.- 7.6 Some Cases Where the Number of Observations Is Random.- 7.7 Historical Remarks.- 8 On Bayes Procedures.- 8.1 Introduction.- 8.2 Bayes Procedures Behave Nicely.- 8.3 The Bernstein-von Mises Phenomenon.- 8.4 A Bernstein-von Mises Result for the i.i.d. Case.- 8.5 Bayes Procedures Behave Miserably.- 8.6 Historical Remarks.- Author Index.

Asymptotics in Statistics–Some Basic Concepts

A new type of stochastic dependence for a sequence of random variables is introduced and studied. Precisely, (Xn)n≥1 is said to be conditionally identically distributed (c.i.d.), with respect to a filtration $(\mathcal{G}_{n})_{n\geq 0}$ , if it is adapted to $(\mathcal{G}_{n})_{n\geq 0}$ and, for each n≥0, (Xk)k>n is identically distributed given the past $\mathcal{G}_{n}$ . In case $\mathcal{G}_{0}=\{\varnothing,\Omega\}$ and $\mathcal{G}_{n}=\sigma(X_{1},\ldots,X_{n})$ , a result of Kallenberg implies that (Xn)n≥1 is exchangeable if and only if it is stationary and c.i.d. After giving some natural examples of nonexchangeable c.i.d. sequences, it is shown that (Xn)n≥1 is exchangeable if and only if (Xτ(n))n≥1 is c.i.d. for any finite permutation τ of {1,2,…}, and that the distribution of a c.i.d. sequence agrees with an exchangeable law on a certain sub-σ-field. Moreover, (1/n)∑k=1nXk converges a.s. and in L1 whenever (Xn)n≥1 is (real-valued) c.i.d. and E[|X1|]<∞. As to the CLT, three types of random centering are considered. One such centering, significant in Bayesian prediction and discrete time filtering, is $E[X_{n+1}\vert \mathcal{G}_{n}]$ . For each centering, convergence in distribution of the corresponding empirical process is analyzed under uniform distance.

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Limit theorems for a class of identically distributed random variables

Given a sequence (μ n ) of random probability measures on a metric space S, consider the conditions: (i) μ n →μ (weakly) a.s. for some random probability measure μ on S; (ii) μ n (f) converges a.s. for all f∈C b (S). Then, (i) implies (ii), while the converse is not true, even if S is separable. For (i) and (ii) to be equivalent, it is enough that S is Radon (i.e. each probability on the Borel sets of S is tight) or that the sequence (P μ n ) is tight, where Pμ n (·)=E(μ n (·)). In particular, (i)⇔(ii) in case S is Polish. The latter result is still available if a.s. convergence is weakened into convergence in probability. In case S=T ∞ with T Radon, a.s. convergence of μ n (f), for those f∈C b (S) which are finite products of elements of C b (T), is sufficient for (i). In case and the limit μ is given in advance, a.s. convergence of characteristic functions is enough for μ n →μ (weakly) a.s. Almost sure weak convergence of random probability measures.

Almost sure weak convergence of random probability measures

Let Xn be a sequence of integrable real random variables, adapted to a filtration (Gn). Define Cn = √{(1 / n)∑k=1nXk - E(Xn+1 | Gn)} and Dn = √n{E(Xn+1 | Gn) - Z}, where Z is the almost-sure limit of E(Xn+1 | Gn) (assumed to exist). Conditions for (Cn, Dn) → N(0, U) x N(0, V) stably are given, where U and V are certain random variables. In particular, under such conditions, we obtain √n{(1 / n)∑k=1nX_k - Z} = Cn + Dn → N(0, U + V) stably. This central limit theorem has natural applications to Bayesian statistics and urn problems. The latter are investigated, by paying special attention to multicolor randomly reinforced urns.

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A central limit theorem and its applications to multicolor randomly reinforced urns

A Glivenko-Cantelli theorem for exchangeable random variables

Conditions are given which suffice for the assessment of a coherent inference by means of a Bayesian algorithm, i.e., a suitable extension of the classical Bayes theorem relative to a finite number of alternatives. Under some further hypotheses such inference is shown to be, in addition, coherent in the sense of Heath, Lane and Sudderth. Moreover, a characterization of coherent posteriors is provided, together with some remarks concerning finitely additive conditional probabilities.

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Patrizia Berti

Papers

Limit theorems for a class of identically distributed random variables

Almost sure weak convergence of random probability measures

A central limit theorem and its applications to multicolor randomly reinforced urns

A Glivenko-Cantelli theorem for exchangeable random variables

Coherent Statistical Inference and Bayes Theorem