We study an ergodic singular control problem with constraint of a regular one-dimensional linear diffusion. The constraint allows the agent to control the diffusion only at the jump times of an independent Poisson process. Under relatively weak assumptions, we characterize the optimal solution as an impulse-type control policy, where it is optimal to exert the exact amount of control needed to push the process to a unique threshold. Moreover, we discuss the connection of the present problem to ergodic singular control problems, and illustrate the results with different well-known cost and diffusion structures.

A classical result for the simple symmetric random walk with 2n steps is that the number of steps above the origin, the time of the last visit to the origin, and the time of the maximum height all have exactly the same distribution and converge when scaled to the arcsine law. Motivated by applications in genomics, we study the distributions of these statistics for the non-Markovian random walk generated from the ascents and descents of a uniform random permutation and a Mallows(q) permutation and show that they have the same asymptotic distributions as for the simple random walk. We also give an unexpected conjecture, along with numerical evidence and a partial proof in special cases, for the result that the number of steps above the origin by step 2n for the uniform permutation generated walk has exactly the same discrete arcsine distribution as for the simple random walk, even though the other statistics for these walks have very different laws. We also give explicit error bounds to the limit theorems using Stein’s method for the arcsine distribution, as well as functional central limit theorems and a strong embedding of the Mallows(q) permutation which is of independent interest.

The performance and effectiveness of an age replacement policy can be assessed by its mean time to failure (MTTF) function. We develop shock model theory in different scenarios for classes of life distributions based on the MTTF function where the probabilities $\bar{P}_k$ of surviving the first k shocks are assumed to have discrete DMTTF, IMTTF and IDMTTF properties. The cumulative damage model of A-Hameed and Proschan [1] is studied in this context and analogous results are established. Weak convergence and moment convergence issues within the IDMTTF class of life distributions are explored. The preservation of the IDMTTF property under some basic reliability operations is also investigated. Finally we show that the intersection of IDMRL and IDMTTF classes contains the BFR family and establish results outlining the positions of various non-monotonic ageing classes in the hierarchy.

We introduce a definition of long range dependence of random processes and fields on an (unbounded) index space $T\subseteq \mathbb{R}^d$ in terms of integrability of the covariance of indicators that a random function exceeds any given level. This definition is specifically designed to cover the case of random functions with infinite variance. We show the value of this new definition and its connection to limit theorems via some examples including subordinated Gaussian as well as random volatility fields and time series.

Pitman (2003), and subsequently Gnedin and Pitman (2006), showed that a large class of random partitions of the integers derived from a stable subordinator of index $\alpha\in(0,1)$ have infinite Gibbs (product) structure as a characterizing feature. The most notable case are random partitions derived from the two-parameter Poisson–Dirichlet distribution, $\textrm{PD}(\alpha,\theta)$, whose corresponding $\alpha$-diversity/local time have generalized Mittag–Leffler distributions, denoted by $\textrm{ML}(\alpha,\theta)$. Our aim in this work is to provide indications on the utility of the wider class of Gibbs partitions as it relates to a study of Riemann–Liouville fractional integrals and size-biased sampling, and in decompositions of special functions, and its potential use in the understanding of various constructions of more exotic processes. We provide characterizations of general laws associated with nested families of $\textrm{PD}(\alpha,\theta)$ mass partitions that are constructed from fragmentation operations described in Dong et al. (2014). These operations are known to be related in distribution to various constructions of discrete random trees/graphs in [n], and their scaling limits. A centerpiece of our work is results related to Mittag–Leffler functions, which play a key role in fractional calculus and are otherwise Laplace transforms of the $\textrm{ML}(\alpha,\theta)$ variables. Notably, this leads to an interpretation within the context of $\textrm{PD}(\alpha,\theta)$ laws conditioned on Poisson point process counts over intervals of scaled lengths of the $\alpha$-diversity.

We propose a new multifractional stochastic process which allows for self-exciting behavior, similar to what can be seen for example in earthquakes and other self-organizing phenomena. The process can be seen as an extension of a multifractional Brownian motion, where the Hurst function is dependent on the past of the process. We define this by means of a stochastic Volterra equation, and we prove existence and uniqueness of this equation, as well as giving bounds on the p-order moments, for all $p\geq1$. We show convergence of an Euler–Maruyama scheme for the process, and also give the rate of convergence, which is dependent on the self-exciting dynamics of the process. Moreover, we discuss various applications of this process, and give examples of different functions to model self-exciting behavior.

Consider the strong subordination of a multivariate Lévy process with a multivariate subordinator. If the subordinate is a stack of independent Lévy processes and the components of the subordinator are indistinguishable within each stack, then strong subordination produces a Lévy process; otherwise it may not. Weak subordination was introduced to extend strong subordination, always producing a Lévy process even when strong subordination does not. Here we prove that strong and weak subordination are equal in law under the aforementioned condition. In addition, we prove that if strong subordination is a Lévy process then it is necessarily equal in law to weak subordination in two cases: firstly when the subordinator is deterministic, and secondly when it is pure-jump with finite activity.

It is well known that stationary geometrically ergodic Markov chains are $\beta$ -mixing (absolutely regular) with geometrically decaying mixing coefficients. Furthermore, for initial distributions other than the stationary one, geometric ergodicity implies $\beta$ -mixing under suitable moment assumptions. In this note we show that similar results hold also for subgeometrically ergodic Markov chains. In particular, for both stationary and other initial distributions, subgeometric ergodicity implies $\beta$ -mixing with subgeometrically decaying mixing coefficients. Although this result is simple, it should prove very useful in obtaining rates of mixing in situations where geometric ergodicity cannot be established. To illustrate our results we derive new subgeometric ergodicity and $\beta$ -mixing results for the self-exciting threshold autoregressive model.

Consider an urn containing balls labeled with integer values. Define a discrete-time random process by drawing two balls, one at a time and with replacement, and noting the labels. Add a new ball labeled with the sum of the two drawn labels. This model was introduced by Siegmund and Yakir (2005) Ann. Prob.33, 2036 for labels taking values in a finite group, in which case the distribution defined by the urn converges to the uniform distribution on the group. For the urn of integers, the main result of this paper is an exponential limit law. The mean of the exponential is a random variable with distribution depending on the starting configuration. This is a novel urn model which combines multi-drawing and an infinite type of balls. The proof of convergence uses the contraction method for recursive distributional equations.

We consider a class of phase-type distributions (PH-distributions), to be called the MMPP class of PH-distributions, and find bounds of their mean and squared coefficient of variation (SCV). As an application, we have shown that the SCV of the event-stationary inter-event time for Markov modulated Poisson processes (MMPPs) is greater than or equal to unity, which answers an open problem for MMPPs. The results are useful for selecting proper PH-distributions and counting processes in stochastic modeling.

We consider a space-time random field on ${{\mathbb{R}^d} \times {\mathbb{R}}}$ given as an integral of a kernel function with respect to a Lévy basis with a convolution equivalent Lévy measure. The field obeys causality in time and is thereby not continuous along the time axis. For a large class of such random fields we study the tail behaviour of certain functionals of the field. It turns out that the tail is asymptotically equivalent to the right tail of the underlying Lévy measure. Particular examples are the asymptotic probability that there is a time point and a rotation of a spatial object with fixed radius, in which the field exceeds the level x, and that there is a time interval and a rotation of a spatial object with fixed radius, in which the average of the field exceeds the level x.

Motivated by the problem of variance allocation for the sum of dependent random variables, Colini-Baldeschi, Scarsini and Vaccari (2018) recently introduced Shapley values for variance and standard deviation games. These Shapley values constitute a criterion satisfying nice properties useful for allocating the variance and the standard deviation of the sum of dependent random variables. However, since Shapley values are in general computationally demanding, Colini-Baldeschi, Scarsini and Vaccari also formulated a conjecture about the relation of the Shapley values of two games, which they proved for the case of two dependent random variables. In this work we prove that their conjecture holds true in the case of an arbitrary number of independent random variables but, at the same time, we provide counterexamples to the conjecture for the case of three dependent random variables.

We prove concentration inequality results for geometric graph properties of an instance of the Cooper–Frieze [5] preferential attachment model with edge-steps. More precisely, we investigate a random graph model that at each time $t\in \mathbb{N}$ , with probability p adds a new vertex to the graph (a vertex-step occurs) or with probability $1-p$ an edge connecting two existent vertices is added (an edge-step occurs). We prove concentration results for the global clustering coefficient as well as the clique number. More formally, we prove that the global clustering, with high probability, decays as $t^{-\gamma(p)}$ for a positive function $\gamma$ of p, whereas the clique number of these graphs is, up to subpolynomially small factors, of order $t^{(1-p)/(2-p)}$ .

There are two types of tempered stable (TS) based Ornstein–Uhlenbeck (OU) processes: (i) the OU-TS process, the OU process driven by a TS subordinator, and (ii) the TS-OU process, the OU process with TS marginal law. They have various applications in financial engineering and econometrics. In the literature, only the second type under the stationary assumption has an exact simulation algorithm. In this paper we develop a unified approach to exactly simulate both types without the stationary assumption. It is mainly based on the distributional decomposition of stochastic processes with the aid of an acceptance–rejection scheme. As the inverse Gaussian distribution is an important special case of TS distribution, we also provide tailored algorithms for the corresponding OU processes. Numerical experiments and tests are reported to demonstrate the accuracy and effectiveness of our algorithms, and some further extensions are also discussed.

We give a new method of proof for a result of D. Pierre-Loti-Viaud and P. Boulongne which can be seen as a generalization of a characterization of Poisson law due to Rényi and Srivastava. We also provide explicit formulas, in terms of Bell polynomials, for the moments of the compound distributions occurring in the extended collective model in non-life insurance.

Signatures are useful in analyzing and evaluating coherent systems. However, their computation is a challenging problem, especially for complex coherent structures. In most cases the reliability of a binary coherent system can be linked to a tail probability associated with a properly defined waiting time random variable in a sequence of binary trials. In this paper we present a method for computing the minimal signature of a binary coherent system. Our method is based on matrix-geometric distributions. First, a proper matrix-geometric random variable corresponding to the system structure is found. Second, its probability generating function is obtained. Finally, the companion representation for the distribution of matrix-geometric distribution is used to obtain a matrix-based expression for the minimal signature of the coherent system. The results are also extended to a system with two types of components.

In the localization game on a graph, the goal is to find a fixed but unknown target node $v^\star$ with the least number of distance queries possible. In the jth step of the game, the player queries a single node $v_j$ and receives, as an answer to their query, the distance between the nodes $v_j$ and $v^\star$ . The sequential metric dimension (SMD) is the minimal number of queries that the player needs to guess the target with absolute certainty, no matter where the target is.

The term SMD originates from the related notion of metric dimension (MD), which can be defined the same way as the SMD except that the player’s queries are non-adaptive. In this work we extend the results of Bollobás, Mitsche, and Prałat [4] on the MD of Erdős–Rényi graphs to the SMD. We find that, in connected Erdős–Rényi graphs, the MD and the SMD are a constant factor apart. For the lower bound we present a clean analysis by combining tools developed for the MD and a novel coupling argument. For the upper bound we show that a strategy that greedily minimizes the number of candidate targets in each step uses asymptotically optimal queries in Erdős–Rényi graphs. Connections with source localization, binary search on graphs, and the birthday problem are discussed.

A family $\{Q_{\beta}\}_{\beta \geq 0}$ of Markov chains is said to exhibit metastable mixing with modes$S_{\beta}^{(1)},\ldots,S_{\beta}^{(k)}$ if its spectral gap (or some other mixing property) is very close to the worst conductance $\min\!\big(\Phi_{\beta}\big(S_{\beta}^{(1)}\big), \ldots, \Phi_{\beta}\big(S_{\beta}^{(k)}\big)\big)$ of its modes for all large values of $\beta$. We give simple sufficient conditions for a family of Markov chains to exhibit metastability in this sense, and verify that these conditions hold for a prototypical Metropolis–Hastings chain targeting a mixture distribution. The existing metastability literature is large, and our present work is aimed at filling the following small gap: finding sufficient conditions for metastability that are easy to verify for typical examples from statistics using well-studied methods, while at the same time giving an asymptotically exact formula for the spectral gap (rather than a bound that can be very far from sharp). Our bounds from this paper are used in a companion paper (O. Mangoubi, N. S. Pillai, and A. Smith, arXiv:1808.03230) to compare the mixing times of the Hamiltonian Monte Carlo algorithm and a random walk algorithm for multimodal target distributions.

The logistic birth and death process is perhaps the simplest stochastic population model that has both density-dependent reproduction and a phase transition, and a lot can be learned about the process by studying its extinction time, $\tau_n$ , as a function of system size n. A number of existing results describe the scaling of $\tau_n$ as $n\to\infty$ for various choices of reproductive rate $r_n$ and initial population $X_n(0)$ as a function of n. We collect and complete this picture, obtaining a complete classification of all sequences $(r_n)$ and $(X_n(0))$ for which there exist rescaling parameters $(s_n)$ and $(t_n)$ such that $(\tau_n-t_n)/s_n$ converges in distribution as $n\to\infty$ , and identifying the limits in each case.

Our aim is to find sufficient conditions for weak convergence of stochastic integrals with respect to the state occupation measure of a Markov chain. First, we study properties of the state indicator function and the state occupation measure of a Markov chain. In particular, we establish weak convergence of the state occupation measure under a scaling of the generator matrix. Then, relying on the connection between the state occupation measure and the Dynkin martingale, we provide sufficient conditions for weak convergence of stochastic integrals with respect to the state occupation measure. We apply our results to derive diffusion limits for the Markov-modulated Erlang loss model and the regime-switching Cox–Ingersoll–Ross process.