In this work, we give a closed form and a recurrence relation for a family of time–space harmonic polynomials relative to a Lévy process. We also state the relationship with the Kailath–Segall (orthogonal) polynomials associated to the process.

New goodness-of-fit tests for Markovian models in time series analysis are developed which are based on the difference between a fully nonparametric estimate of the one-step transition distribution function of the observed process and that of the model class postulated under the null hypothesis. The model specification under the null allows for Markovian models, the transition mechanisms of which depend on an unknown vector of parameters and an unspecified distribution of i.i.d. innovations. Asymptotic properties of the test statistic are derived and the critical values of the test are found using appropriate bootstrap schemes. General properties of the bootstrap for Markovian processes are derived. A new central limit theorem for triangular arrays of weakly dependent random variables is obtained. For the proof of stochastic equicontinuity of multidimensional empirical processes, we use a simple approach based on an anisotropic tiling of the space. The finite-sample behavior of the proposed test is illustrated by some numerical examples and a real-data application is given.

Given an i.i.d. sample $X_1, …, X_n$ with common bounded density $f_0$ belonging to a Sobolev space of order $α$ over the real line, estimation of the quadratic functional $∫_ℝf_0^2(x) \mathrm{d}x$ is considered. It is shown that the simplest kernel-based plug-in estimator $$\frac{2}{n(n-1)h_{n}} \sum_{1\leq i<j\leq n} K\biggl(\frac {X_{i}-X_{j}}{h_{n}}\biggr)$$ is asymptotically efficient if $α>1/4$ and rate-optimal if $α≤1/4$. A data-driven rule to choose the bandwidth $h_n$ is then proposed, which does not depend on prior knowledge of $α$, so that the corresponding estimator is rate-adaptive for $α≤1/4$ and asymptotically efficient if $α>1/4$.

In the present paper, we give a condensed review, for the nonspecialist reader, of a new modelling framework for spatio-temporal processes, based on Lévy theory. We show the potential of the approach in stochastic geometry and spatial statistics by studying Lévy-based growth modelling of planar objects. The growth models considered are spatio-temporal stochastic processes on the circle. As a by product, flexible new models for space–time covariance functions on the circle are provided. An application of the Lévy-based growth models to tumour growth is discussed.

We point out that a proper use of the Hoeffding–ANOVA decomposition for symmetric statistics of finite urn sequences, previously introduced by the author, yields a decomposition of the space of square-integrable functionals of a Dirichlet–Ferguson process, written $L^2(D)$, into orthogonal subspaces of multiple integrals of increasing order. This gives an isomorphism between $L^2(D)$ and an appropriate Fock space over a class of deterministic functions. By means of a well-known result due to Blackwell and MacQueen, we show that each element of the $n$th orthogonal space of multiple integrals can be represented as the $L^2$ limit of $U$-statistics with degenerate kernel of degree $n$. General formulae for the decomposition of a given functional are provided in terms of linear combinations of conditioned expectations whose coefficients are explicitly computed. We show that, in simple cases, multiple integrals have a natural representation in terms of Jacobi polynomials. Several connections are established, in particular with Bayesian decision problems, and with some classic formulae concerning the transition densities of multiallele diffusion models, due to Littler and Fackerell, and Griffiths. Our results may also be used to calculate the best approximation of elements of $L^2(D)$ by means of $U$-statistics of finite vectors of exchangeable observations.

Let $\{X_j\}$ be independent, identically distributed random variables. It is well known that the functional CUSUM statistic and its randomly permuted version both converge weakly to a Brownian bridge if second moments exist. Surprisingly, an infinite-variance counterpart does not hold true. In the present paper, we let $\{X_j\}$ be in the domain of attraction of a strictly $α$-stable law, $α∈(0, 2)$. While the functional CUSUM statistics itself converges to an $α$-stable bridge and so does the permuted version, provided both the $\{X_j\}$ and the permutation are random, the situation turns out to be more delicate if a realization of the $\{X_j\}$ is fixed and randomness is restricted to the permutation. Here, the conditional distribution function of the permuted CUSUM statistics converges in probability to a random and nondegenerate limit.

Ratios of quadratic forms in correlated normal variables which introduce noncentrality into the quadratic forms are considered. The denominator is assumed to be positive (with probability 1). Various serial correlation estimates such as least-squares, Yule–Walker and Burg, as well as Durbin–Watson statistics, provide important examples of such ratios. The cumulative distribution function (c.d.f.) and density for such ratios admit saddlepoint approximations. These approximations are shown to preserve uniformity of relative error over the entire range of support. Furthermore, explicit values for the limiting relative errors at the extreme edges of support are derived.

This paper concerns the use of sequential Monte Carlo methods (SMC) for smoothing in general state space models. A well-known problem when applying the standard SMC technique in the smoothing mode is that the resampling mechanism introduces degeneracy of the approximation in the path space. However, when performing maximum likelihood estimation via the EM algorithm, all functionals involved are of additive form for a large subclass of models. To cope with the problem in this case, a modification of the standard method (based on a technique proposed by Kitagawa and Sato) is suggested. Our algorithm relies on forgetting properties of the filtering dynamics and the quality of the estimates produced is investigated, both theoretically and via simulations.

The EM procedure is a principal tool for parameter estimation in the hidden Markov models. However, applications replace EM by Viterbi extraction, or training (VT). VT is computationally less intensive, more stable and has more of an intuitive appeal, but VT estimation is biased and does not satisfy the following fixed point property. Hypothetically, given an infinitely large sample and initialized to the true parameters, VT will generally move away from the initial values. We propose adjusted Viterbi training (VA), a new method to restore the fixed point property and thus alleviate the overall imprecision of the VT estimators, while preserving the computational advantages of the baseline VT algorithm. Simulations elsewhere have shown that VA appreciably improves the precision of estimation in both the special case of mixture models and more general HMMs. However, being entirely analytic, the VA correction relies on infinite Viterbi alignments and associated limiting probability distributions. While explicit in the mixture case, the existence of these limiting measures is not obvious for more general HMMs. This paper proves that under certain mild conditions, the required limiting distributions for general HMMs do exist.

We investigate the estimation of the extreme value index when the data are subject to random censorship. We prove, in a unified way, detailed asymptotic normality results for various estimators of the extreme value index and use these estimators as the main building block for estimators of extreme quantiles. We illustrate the quality of these methods by a small simulation study and apply the estimators to medical data.

We study the asymptotic joint distribution of sample space–time covariance estimators of strictly stationary random fields. We do this without any marginal or joint distributional assumptions other than mild moment and mixing conditions. We consider several situations depending on whether the observations are regularly or irregularly spaced and whether one part or the whole domain of interest is fixed or increasing. A simulation experiment illustrates the theoretical results.

We extend a law of the single logarithm for delayed sums by Lai to delayed sums of random fields. A law for subsequences, which also includes the one-dimensional case, is obtained in passing.

In the first part of this paper, we give easy and intuitive proofs for the small value probabilities of the martingale limit of a supercritical Galton–Watson process in both the Schröder and the Böttcher cases. These results are well known, but the most cited proofs rely on generating function arguments which are hard to transfer to other settings. In the second part, we show that the strategy underlying our proofs can be used in the quite different context of self-intersections of stochastic processes. Solving a problem posed by Wenbo Li, we find the small value probabilities for intersection local times of several Brownian motions, as well as for self-intersection local times of a single Brownian motion.