Table of contents, Bernoulli Journal, vol. 11, no. 6 (2005)

Estimation of the extreme-value index and generalized quantile plots; Authors: J. Beirlant, G. Dierckx, A. Guillou

Pointwise universal consistency of nonparametric density estimators; Authors: Jose M. Vidal-Sanz

Identification of multifractional Brownian motion; Authors: Jean-François Coeurjolly

Zero-sum continuous-time Markov games with unbounded transition and discounted payoff rates; Authors: Xianping Guo, Onésimo Hernández-Lerma

Profile likelihood inferences on semiparametric varying-coefficient partially linear models; Authors: Jianqing Fan, Tao Huang

On the convergence of the spectral empirical process of Wigner matrices; Authors: Z.D. Bai, J. Yao

Spectral decomposition of score functions in linkage analysis; Authors: Ola Hössjer

Approximation of sums of conditionally independent variables by the translated Poisson distribution; Authors: Adrian Röllin

Editorial board, Bernoulli Journal, vol. 11, no. 6 (2005)

Peter McCullagh, Editor-in-Chief

Peter J. Bickel, Editor

D.R. Cox, Editor

David Nualart, Editor

Edward Waymire, Editor

Lucien Birgé, Associate Editor

Evarist Giné, Associate Editor

Peter Hall, Associate Editor

Wilfrid S. Kendall, Associate Editor

Xiao-Li Meng, Associate Editor

Thomas Mikosch, Associate Editor

Gesine Reinert, Associate Editor

Ya'acov Ritov, Associate Editor

David Siegmund, Associate Editor

Dag Tjøstheim, Associate Editor

Alexandre Tsybakov, Associate Editor

Sara van de Geer, Associate Editor

Eva Bjorn Vedel Jensen, Associate Editor

Alan Welsh, Associate Editor

Wei-Biao Wu, Associate Editor

Mitzi Nakatsuka, Editorial Assistant

Richard Leigh, Copy Editor

Ank Lepping, Desk Editor

Ole E. Barndorff-Nielsen, Past Editors-in-Chief(1995-2000)

Willem R. van Zwet, Past Editors-in-Chief(2000-2003)

Jens L. Jensen, Past Co-Editors (1995-2000)

Sara van de Geer, Past Co-Editors (2000-2003)

In extreme-value analysis, a central topic is the adaptive estimation of the extreme-value index γ. Hitherto, most of the attention in this area has been devoted to the case γ>0, that is, when $\overline{F}$ is a regularly varying function with index -1/γ. In addition to the well-known Hill estimator, many other estimators are currently available. Among the most important are the kernel-type estimators and the weighted least-squares slope estimators based on the Pareto quantile plot or the Zipf plot, as reviewed by Csörgö and Viharos. Using an exponential regression model (ERM) for spacings between successive extreme order statistics, both Beirlant et al. and Feuerverger and Hall introduced bias-reduced estimators.

This paper presents sufficient conditions for pointwise universal consistency of nonparametric delta estimators and shows the application of these conditions for some classes of nonparametric estimators.

We develop a method for estimating the Hurst function of a multifractional Brownian motion, which is an extension of the fractional Brownian motion in the sense that the path regularity can now vary with time. This method is based on a local estimation of the second-order moment of a unique discretized filtered path. The effectiveness of our procedure is investigated in a short simulation study.

This paper is concerned with two-person zero-sum games for continuous-time Markov chains, with possibly unbounded payoff and transition rate functions, under the discounted payoff criterion. We give conditions under which the existence of the value of the game and a pair of optimal stationary strategies is ensured by using the optimality (or Shapley) equation. We prove the convergence of the value iteration scheme to the game's value and to a pair of optimal stationary strategies. Moreover, when the transition rates are bounded we further show that the convergence of value iteration is exponential. Our results are illustrated with a controlled queueing system with unbounded transition and reward rates.

Varying-coefficient partially linear models are frequently used in statistical modelling, but their estimation and inference have not been systematically studied. This paper proposes a profile least-squares technique for estimating the parametric component and studies the asymptotic normality of the profile least-squares estimator. The main focus is the examination of whether the generalized likelihood technique developed by Fan et al. is applicable to the testing problem for the parametric component of semiparametric models. We introduce the profile likelihood ratio test and demonstrate that it follows an asymptotically χ² distribution under the null hypothesis. This not only unveils a new Wilks type of phenomenon, but also provides a simple and useful method for semiparametric inferences. In addition, the Wald statistic for semiparametric models is introduced and demonstrated to possess a sampling property similar to the profile likelihood ratio statistic. A new and simple bandwidth selection technique is proposed for semiparametric inferences on partially linear models and numerical examples are presented to illustrate the proposed methods.

It is well known that the spectral distribution F_n of a Wigner matrix converges to Wigner's semicircle law. We consider the empirical process indexed by a set of functions analytic on an open domain of the complex plane including the support of the semicircle law. Under fourth-moment conditions, we prove that this empirical process converges to a Gaussian process. Explicit formulae for the mean function and the covariance function of the limit process are provided.

We consider stochastic processes occurring in nonparametric linkage analysis for mapping disease susceptibility genes in the human genome. Under the null hypothesis that no disease gene is located in the chromosomal region of interest, we prove that the linkage process Z converges weakly to a mixture of Ornstein-Uhlenbeck processes as the number of families N tends to infinity. Under a sequence of contiguous alternatives, we prove weak convergence towards the same Gaussian process with a deterministic non-zero mean function added to it. The results are applied to power calculations for chromosome- and genome-wide scans, and are valid for arbitrary family structures. Our main tool is the inheritance vector process v, which is a stationary and continuous-time Markov process with state space the set of binary vectors w of given length. Certain score functions are expanded as a linear combination of an orthonormal system of basis functions which are eigenvectors of the intensity matrix of v.

It is shown that the sum of a Poisson and an independent approximately normally distributed integer-valued random variable can be well approximated in total variation by a translated Poisson distribution, and further that a mixed translated Poisson distribution is close to a mixed translated Poisson distribution with the same random shift but fixed variance. Using these two results, a general approach is then presented for the approximation of sums of integer-valued random variables, having some conditional independence structure, by a translated Poisson distribution. We illustrate the method by means of two examples. The proofs are mainly based on Stein's method for distributional approximation.

Acknowledgement of refereeing work BJ vol. 11

Annual index BJ vol. 11