arXiv subjects

Matthias Scherer

Publications and source records attributed to Matthias Scherer.

9 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2026

Tau-Rho Equality and Other Dependence Measures of a Subclass of Factorizable Copulas

Kendall's tau and Spearman's rho, two widely used dependence measures in statistics and risk management, are often treated as interchangeable, yet can disagree sharply: Schreyer et al.~(2017) established the exact region of attainable $(\tau,\rho)$ pairs. We study the complementary question of equality, namely, identifying nontrivial families of copulas $C$ satisfying $\tau_C=\rho_C$. We prove that this equality holds for every factorizable copula of the form $C_{e,\alpha}\ast C_{\beta,e}$, where $\alpha$ and $\beta$ are piecewise linear monotonic surjections (PLMS). For these PLMS-generated copulas, we study further dependence measures, including Chatterjee's rank correlation coefficient and tail dependence coefficients, revealing some useful algebraic formulas and unexpected phenomena. In particular, Chatterjee's coefficient can exhibit extreme asymmetry.

math.ST↗

arXiv2026

Optimal basis risk weighting in expectile-based parametric insurance

Parametric insurance contracts translate index measurements to compensation for policyholders' losses using predefined payment schemes. These need to be designed carefully to keep basis risk, i.e. the disparity between payouts and true damages, small. Previous research has motivated the use of conditional expectiles as payment schemes, whose compensation is impacted by the policyholder's potentially unknown attitude towards basis risk. To alleviate this model uncertainty and to investigate the impact of (hidden) influencing factors, we characterize existence and uniqueness of the optimal basis risk weighting in a utility-maximization framework through a set of boundary conditions. In the absence of an optimal solution, we provide comparisons to the utility of no insurance and full indemnity coverage. We establish a link between location-scale distributions and separability of conditional expectiles' derivatives, thus improving the understanding of these statistical functionals. A simulation study on parametric hurricane insurance visualizes our results, investigates the influence of premium loading and risk aversion on the optimal weighting, and comments on the challenge of (spatial) loss dependence.

stat.AP↗

arXiv2025

Expectiles as basis risk-optimal payment schemes in parametric insurance

Payments in parametric insurance solutions are linked to an index and thus decoupled from policyholders' true losses. While this principle has appealing operational benefits compared to traditional indemnity coverage, i.e. is very efficient and cost effective, a downside is the discrepancy between payouts and actual damage, called basis risk. We show that in an asymmetrically weighted mean square error framework, the basis risk-minimizing payment schemes for pure parametric and parametric index insurance contracts can be expressed as conditional expectiles of policyholders' true loss given a compensation-triggering incident. We provide connections to stochastic orderings and demonstrate that regression approaches allow easy implementation in practice. Our results are visualized in parametric coverage for cyber risks and agricultural insurance.

stat.AP↗

arXiv2020

Exchangeable min-id sequences: Characterization, exponent measures and non-decreasing id-processes

We establish a one-to-one correspondence between (i) exchangeable sequences of random variables whose finite-dimensional distributions are minimum (or maximum) infinitely divisible and (ii) non-negative, non-decreasing, infinitely divisible stochastic processes. The exponent measure of an exchangeable minimum infinitely divisible sequence is shown to be the sum of a very simple ``drift measure'' and a mixture of product probability measures, which uniquely corresponds to the L\'evy measure of a non-negative and non-decreasing infinitely divisible process. The latter is shown to be supported on non-negative and non-decreasing functions. In probabilistic terms, the aforementioned infinitely divisible process is equal to the conditional cumulative hazard process associated with the exchangeable sequence of random variables with minimum (or maximum) infinitely divisible marginals. Our results provide an analytic umbrella which embeds the de Finetti subfamilies of many interesting classes of multivariate distributions, such as exogenous shock models, exponential and geometric laws with lack-of-memory property, min-stable multivariate exponential and extreme-value distributions, as well as reciprocal Archimedean copulas with completely monotone generator and Archimedean copulas with log-completely monotone generator.

math.PR↗

arXiv2020

Multivariate geometric distributions, (logarithmically) monotone sequences, and infinitely divisible laws (with erratum by Natalia Shenkman)

Two stochastic representations of multivariate geometric distributions are analyzed, both are obtained by lifting the lack-of-memory (LM) property of the univariate geometric law to the multivariate case. On the one hand, the narrow-sense multivariate geometric law can be considered a discrete equivalent of the well-studied Marshall-Olkin exponential law. On the other hand, the more general wide-sense geometric law is shown to be characterized by the LM property and can differ significantly from its continuous counterpart, e.g., by allowing for negative pairwise correlations. For both families of distributions, their $d$-dimensional exchangeable subclass is characterized analytically via $d$-log-monotone, resp.\ $d$-monotone, sequences of parameters. Using this reparameterization, the subfamilies of distributions with conditionally i.i.d.\ components in the sense of de Finetti's theorem are determined. For these, a third stochastic construction based on a non-decreasing random walk is presented. The narrow-sense family is embedded in this construction when the increments of the involved random walk are infinitely divisible. The exchangeable narrow-sense law is furthermore shown to exhibit the multivariate right tail increasing (MRTI) dependence.

math.PR↗

arXiv2019

On the structure of exchangeable extreme-value copulas

We show that the set of $d$-variate symmetric stable tail dependence functions, uniquely associated with exchangeable $d$-dimensional extreme-value copulas, is a simplex and determine its extremal boundary. The subset of elements which arises as $d$-margins of the set of $(d+k)$-variate symmetric stable tail dependence functions is shown to be proper for arbitrary $k \geq 1$. Finally, we derive an intuitive and useful necessary condition for a bivariate extreme-value copula to arise as bi-margin of an exchangeable extreme-value copula of arbitrarily large dimension, and thus to be conditionally iid.

math.ST↗

arXiv2018

Subordinators which are infinitely divisible w.r.t. time: Construction, properties, and simulation of max-stable sequences and infinitely divisible laws

The concept of a Lévy subordinator is generalized to a family of non-decreasing stochastic processes, which are parameterized in terms of two Bernstein functions. Whereas the independent increments property is only maintained in the Lévy subordinator special case, the considered family is always strongly infinitely divisible with respect to time, meaning that a path can be represented in distribution as a finite sum with arbitrarily many summands of independent and identically distributed paths of another process. Besides distributional properties of the process, we present two applications to the design of accurate and efficient simulation algorithms. First, each member of the considered family corresponds uniquely to an exchangeable max-stable sequence of random variables, and we demonstrate how the associated extreme-value copula can be simulated exactly and efficiently from its Pickands dependence measure. Second, we show how one obtains different series and integral representations for infinitely divisible probability laws by varying the parameterizing pair of Bernstein functions, without changing the law of one-dimensional margins of the process. As a particular example, we present an exact simulation algorithm for compound Poisson distributions from the Bondesson class, for which the generalized inverse of the distribution function of the associated Stieltjes measure can be evaluated accurately.

math.PR↗

arXiv2016

Exchangeable exogenous shock models

We characterize a comprehensive family of $d$-variate exogenous shock models. Analytically, we consider a family of multivariate distribution functions that arises from ordering, idiosyncratically distorting, and finally multiplying the arguments. Necessary and sufficient conditions on the involved distortions to yield a multivariate distribution function are given. Probabilistically, the attainable set of distribution functions corresponds to a large class of exchangeable exogenous shock models. Besides, the vector of exceedance times of an increasing additive stochastic process across independent exponential trigger variables is shown to constitute an interesting subclass of the considered distributions and yields a second probabilistic model. The alternative construction is illustrated in terms of two examples.

math.ST↗

arXiv2014

Consistent iterated simulation of multi-variate default times: a Markovian indicators characterization

We investigate under which conditions a single simulation of joint default times at a final time horizon can be decomposed into a set of simulations of joint defaults on subsequent adjacent sub-periods leading to that final horizon. Besides the theoretical interest, this is also a practical problem as part of the industry has been working under the misleading assumption that the two approaches are equivalent for practical purposes. As a reasonable trade-off between realistic stylized facts, practical demands, and mathematical tractability, we propose models leading to a Markovian multi-variate survival--indicator process, and we investigate two instances of static models for the vector of default times from the statistical literature that fall into this class. On the one hand, the "looping default" case is known to be equipped with this property, and we point out that it coincides with the classical "Freund distribution" in the bivariate case. On the other hand, if all sub-vectors of the survival indicator process are Markovian, this constitutes a new characterization of the Marshall--Olkin distribution, and hence of multi-variate lack-of-memory. A paramount property of the resulting model is stability of the type of multi-variate distribution with respect to elimination or insertion of a new marginal component with marginal distribution from the same family. The practical implications of this "nested margining" property are enormous. To implement this distribution we present an efficient and unbiased simulation algorithm based on the Lévy-frailty construction. We highlight different pitfalls in the simulation of dependent default times and examine, within a numerical case study, the effect of inadequate simulation practices.

q-fin.RM↗