Statistical Inference Procedures for Bivariate Archimedean Copulas
本文研究如何从随机样本中选择合适的阿基米德连接函数来描述两个变量间的依赖结构，提出一种基于Kendall's tau分解的半参数估计方法，并给出渐近方差公式。
Abstract A bivariate distribution function H(x, y) with marginals F(x) and G(y) is said to be generated by an Archimedean copula if it can be expressed in the form H(x, y) = ϕ–1[ϕ{F(x)} + ϕ{G(y)}] for some convex, decreasing function ϕ defined on [0, 1] in such a way that ϕ(1) = 0. Many well-known systems of bivariate distributions belong to this class, including those of Gumbel, Ali-Mikhail-Haq-Thélot, Clayton, Frank, and Hougaard. Frailty models also fall under that general prescription. This article examines the problem of selecting an Archimedean copula providing a suitable representation of the dependence structure between two variates X and Y in the light of a random sample (X 1, Y 1), …, (X n , Y n ). The key to the estimation procedure is a one-dimensional empirical distribution function that can be constructed whether the uniform representation of X and Y is Archimedean or not, and independently of their marginals. This semiparametric estimator, based on a decomposition of Kendall's tau statistic, is seen to be √n-consistent, and an explicit formula for its asymptotic variance is provided. This leads to a strategy for selecting the parametric family of Archimedean copulas that provides the best possible fit to a given set of data. To illustrate these procedures, a uranium exploration data set is reanalyzed. Although the presentation is restricted to problems involving a random sample from a bivariate distribution, extensions to situations involving multivariate or censored data could be envisaged.