Irene Crimaldi

Conditionally identically distributed species sampling sequences

In this paper the theory of species sampling sequences is linked to the theory of conditionally identically distributed sequences in order to enlarge the set of species sampling sequences which are mathematically tractable. The conditional identity in distribution (see Berti, Pratelli and Rigo (2004)) is a new type of dependence for random variables, which generalizes the well-known notion of exchangeability. In this paper a class of random sequences, called generalized species sampling sequences, is defined and a condition to have conditional identity in distribution is given. Moreover, two types of generalized species sampling sequence that are conditionally identically distributed are introduced and studied: the generalized Poisson-Dirichlet sequence and the generalized Ottawa sequence. Some examples are discussed.

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

We give a central limit theorem, which has applications to Bayesian statistics and urn problems. The latter are investigated, by paying special attention to multicolor randomly reinforced generalized Polya urns.

Rate of convergence of predictive distributions for dependent data

This paper deals with empirical processes of the type Cn(B) = n^(1/2) {µn(B) - P(Xn+1 in B | X1, . . . ,Xn)} , where (Xn) is a sequence of random variables and µn = (1/n)SUM(i=1,..,n) d(Xi) the empirical measure. Conditions for supB|Cn(B)| to converge stably (in particular, in distribution) are given, where B ranges over a suitable class of measurable sets. These conditions apply when (Xn) is exchangeable, or, more generally, conditionally identically distributed (in the sense of [6]). By such conditions, in some relevant situations, one obtains that supB|Cn(B)|-P->0 or even that n^(1/2) supB|Cn(B)| converges a.s.. Results of this type are useful in Bayesian statistics.

CENTRAL LIMIT THEOREMS FOR AN INDIAN BUFFET MODEL WITH RANDOM WEIGHTS

The three-parameter Indian buffet process is generalized. T he possibly different role played by customers is taken into account by suitable (random) weights. Various limit theorems are also proved for such generalized Indian buffet process. Let L_n be the number of dishes experimented by the first n customers, and let {\bar K}_n=(1/n)\sum_{i=1}^n K_i where K_i is the number of dishes tried by customer i. The asymptotic distributions of L_n and {\bar K}_n, suitably centered and scaled, are obtained. The convergence turns out to be stable (and not only in distribution). As a particular case, the results apply to the standard (i.e., non generalized) Indian buffet process.

Asymptotic Results for a Generalized Pólya Urn with “Multi-Updating” and Applications to Clinical Trials

In this article, a new Pólya urn model is introduced and studied; in particular, a strong law of large numbers and two central limit theorems are proved. This urn generalizes a model studied in Berti et al. (2004), May et al. (2005), and in Crimaldi (2007), and it has natural applications in clinical trials. Indeed, the model includes both delayed and missing (or null) responses. Moreover, a connection with the conditional identity in distribution of Berti et al. (2004) is given.

Synchronization of reinforced stochastic processes with a network-based interaction

Randomly evolving systems composed by elements which interact among each other have always been of great interest in several scientific fields. This work deals with the synchronization phenomenon, that could be roughly defined as the tendency of different components to adopt a common behavior. We continue the study of a model of interacting stochastic processes with reinforcement, that recently has been introduced in Crimaldi et al. (2016, arXiv:1602.06217). Generally speaking, by reinforcement we mean any mechanism for which the probability that a given event occurs has an increasing dependence on the number of times that events of the same type occurred in the past. The particularity of systems of such stochastic processes is that synchronization is induced along time by the reinforcement mechanism itself and does not require a large-scale limit. We focus on the relationship between the topology of the network of the interactions and the long-time synchronization phenomenon. After proving the almost sure synchronization, we provide some CLTs in the sense of stable convergence that establish the convergence rates and the asymptotic distributions for both convergence to the common limit and synchronization. The obtained results lead to the construction of asymptotic confidence intervals for the limit random variable and of statistical tests to make inference on the topology of the network given the observation of the reinforced stochastic processes positioned at the vertices.

Systemic importance of financial institutions: regulations, research, open issues, proposals

In the field of risk management, scholars began to bring together the quantitative methodologies with the banking management issues about 30 years ago, with a special focus on market, credit and operational risks. After the systemic effects of banks defaults during the recent financial crisis, and despite a huge amount of literature in the last years concerning the systemic risk, no standard methodologies have been set up to now. Even the new Basel 3 regulation has adopted a heuristic indicator-based approach, quite far from an effective quantitative tool. In this paper, we refer to the different pieces of the puzzle: definition of systemic risk, a set of coherent and useful measures, the computability of these measures, the data set structure. In this challenging field, we aim to build a comprehensive picture of the state of the art, to illustrate the open issues, and to outline some paths for a more successful future research. This work appropriately integrates other useful surveys and it is directed to both academic researchers and practitioners.

A generalized telegraph process with velocity driven by random trials

We consider a random trial-based telegraph process, which describes a motion on the real line with two constant velocities along opposite directions. At each epoch of the underlying counting process the new velocity is determined by the outcome of a random trial. Two schemes are taken into account: Bernoulli trials and classical Pólya urn trials. We investigate the probability law of the process and the mean of the velocity of the moving particle. We finally discuss two cases of interest: (i) the case of Bernoulli trials and intertimes having exponential distributions with linear rates (in which, interestingly, the process exhibits a logistic stationary density with nonzero mean), and (ii) the case of Pólya trials and intertimes having first gamma and then exponential distributions with constant rates.

Convergence results for a normalized triangular array of symmetric random variables

For a triangular array of symmetric random variables (without any integrability condition) we replace the classical assumption of row-wise independence by that of row-wise joint symmetry. Under this weaker assumption we prove some results concerning the convergence in distribution of a suitable sequence of randomly normalized sums to the standard normal distribution. Then we exhibit a class of row-wise independent triangular arrays for which the ordinary sums fail to converge in distribution, while our results enable us to affirm the convergence in distribution of the normalized sums.

Syncronization and functional central limit theorems for interacting reinforced random walks

We obtain Central Limit Theorems in Functional form for a class of time-inhomogeneous interacting random walks on the simplex of probability measures over a finite set. Due to a reinforcement mechanism, the increments of the walks are correlated, forcing their convergence to the same, possibly random, limit. Random walks of this form have been introduced in the context of urn models and in stochastic approximation. We also propose an application to opinion dynamics in a random network evolving via preferential attachment. We study, in particular, random walks interacting through a mean-field rule and compare the rate they converge to their limit with the rate of synchronization, i.e. the rate at which their mutual distances converge to zero. Under certain conditions, synchronization is faster than convergence.