This note gives the rate for a Wasserstein distance between the distribution of a Bernoulli process on discrete time and that of a Poisson process, using Stein's method and Palm theory. The result here highlights the possibility that the logarithmic factor involved in the upper bounds established by Barbour and Brown (1992) and Barbour et al. (1995) may be superfluous in the true Wasserstein distance between the distributions of a point process and a Poisson process.

We propose a wide generalization of known results related to the telegraph process. Functionals of the simple telegraph process on a straight line and their generalizations on an arbitrary state space are studied.

The solution is presented to all optimal stopping problems of the form supτE(G(|Β τ |) – cτ), where is standard Brownian motion and the supremum is taken over all stopping times τ for B with finite expectation, while the map G : ℝ+ → ℝ satisfies for some being given and fixed. The optimal stopping time is shown to be the hitting time by the reflecting Brownian motion of the set of all (approximate) maximum points of the map . The method of proof relies upon Wald's identity for Brownian motion and simple real analysis arguments. A simple proof of the Dubins–Jacka–Schwarz–Shepp–Shiryaev (square root of two) maximal inequality for randomly stopped Brownian motion is given as an application.

We introduce adaptive-simulation schemes for estimating performance measures for stochastic systems based on the method of control variates. We consider several possible methods for adaptively tuning the control-variate estimators, and describe their asymptotic properties. Under certain assumptions, including the existence of a ‘perfect control variate’, all of the estimators considered converge faster than the canonical rate of n −1/2, where n is the simulation run length. Perfect control variates for a variety of stochastic processes can be constructed from ‘approximating martingales’. We prove a central limit theorem for an adaptive estimator that converges at rate A similar estimator converges at rate n −1. An exponential rate of convergence is also possible under suitable conditions.

This paper studies the connection between the dynamical and equilibrium behaviour of large uncontrolled loss networks. We consider the behaviour of the number of calls of each type in the network, and show that, under the limiting regime of Kelly (1986), all trajectories of the limiting dynamics converge to a single fixed point, which is necessarily that on which the limiting stationary distribution is concentrated. The approach uses Lyapunov techniques and involves the evolution of the transition rates of a stationary Markov process in such a way that it tends to reversibility.

It is shown that the stationary excursions above level x for the stationary M/G/1 queue with the service time distribution belonging to a certain class of subexponential distributions are asymptotically of two types as x →∞: either the excursion starts with a jump from a level which is O(1) and the initial excess over x converges to ∞, or it starts from a level of the form x – O(1) and the excess has a proper limit distribution. The two types occur with probabilities ρ, resp. 1 – ρ.

As has been shown by de Maré, in a stationary Gaussian process the length of the successive zero-crossing intervals cannot be independent, except for the degenerate case of a pure cosine process. However, no closed-form expression of the distribution of these quantities is known at present. In this paper we present an accurate explicit approximative formula, derived by replacing the Slepian model process by its regression curve.

In this note we present results for the queueing system Ek/G/1 which are analogous to those obtained in Finch (1969) for the queueing system GI/Ek/1. As in that paper we adopt the notation and terminology of Kingman (1966) without further comment.

We consider the random vector T = (T(0), ···, T(n)) with independent identically distributed coordinates such that Pr{T(i) = j} = Pj, j = 0, 1, ···, n, Σ . A realization of T can be viewed as a random graph GT with vertices {0, ···, n} and arcs {(0, T(0)), ···, (n, T(n))}. For each T we partition the vertex-set of GT into three disjoint groups and study the joint probability distribution of their cardinalities. Assuming that we observe the asymptotics of this distribution, as n → ∞, for all possible values of P0. It turns out that in some cases these cardinalities are asymptotically independent and identically distributed.

Bounds on the rate of convergence measured by the variation distance are obtained for the number of large spacings and for two occupancy problems connected with multinomial and Pólya sampling. The bounds are derived by imbedding techniques together with the elementary coupling inequality.

The no-aging property and the ℓ1-isotropic model it implies have been introduced to overcome certain shortcomings of the exponential model. However, its definition is abstract and not very useful for practitioners. This paper presents several additional characterizations of the no-aging property. Included are (1) characterizations that appropriately generalize the memoryless property and the constant-failure-rate property of the exponential, (2) behavioral characterizations based on fair bets, and (3) geometric characterizations of the survival and density function and differential-geometric characterizations based on tensor methods.

Intuitively, the effect of conditioning a one-dimensional process to remain below a certain (possibly time-dependent) boundary is to ‘push' the process downwards. This paper investigates the effect of such conditioning, and finds the class of processes for which our intuition is accurate. It is found that ordinary stochastic inequalities are in general unsuitable for making statements about such conditioned processes, and that a stronger type of inequality is more appropriate.

The investigation is motivated by applications in estimation of boundary hitting time distributions.

Financial data are as a rule asymmetric, although most econometric models are symmetric. This applies also to continuous-time models for high-frequency and irregularly spaced data. We discuss some asymmetric versions of the continuous-time GARCH model, concentrating then on the GJR-COGARCH model. We calculate higher-order moments and extend the first-jump approximation. These results are prerequisites for moment estimation and pseudo maximum likelihood estimation of the GJR-COGARCH model parameters, respectively, which we derive in detail.

The present theory of finite reservoirs is not rich in general theorems even when of the simple Moran type, with unit draft and stationary discrete independent-sequence inflows. For the corresponding systems with unbounded capacity however there are two classes of results which have been known for some time. One of these classes is concerned with the time-dependent solution, where the theory provides a functional equation for the generating function of the time to first emptiness (Kendall (1957)), and the other with the asymptotic stationary distribution of reservoir contents, for which an explicit formula for the generating function is available (Moran (1959)).

Let $\{X_{\textbf{n}} \colon \textbf{n}\in{\mathbb Z}^d\}$ be a weakly dependent stationary random field with maxima $M_{A} :=, \sup\{X_{\textbf{i}} \colon \textbf{i}\in A\}$ for finite $A\subset{\mathbb Z}^d$ and $M_{\textbf{n}} := \sup\{X_{\textbf{i}} \colon \mathbf{1} \leq \textbf{i} \leq \textbf{n} \}$ for $\textbf{n}\in{\mathbb N}^d$ . In a general setting we prove that ${\mathbb{P}}(M_{(N_1(n),N_2(n),\ldots, N_d(n))} \leq v_n)$ $= \exp(\!- n^d {\mathbb{P}}(X_{\mathbf{0}} > v_n , M_{A_n} \leq v_n)) + {\text{o}}(1)$ for some increasing sequence of sets $A_n$ of size $ {\text{o}}(n^d)$ , where $(N_1(n),N_2(n), \ldots,N_d(n))\to(\infty,\infty, \ldots, \infty)$ and $N_1(n)N_2(n)\cdots N_d(n)\sim n^d$ . The sets $A_n$ are determined by a translation-invariant total order $\preccurlyeq$ on ${\mathbb Z}^d$ . For a class of fields satisfying a local mixing condition, including m-dependent ones, the main theorem holds with a constant finite A replacing $A_n$ . The above results lead to new formulas for the extremal index for random fields. The new method for calculating limiting probabilities for maxima is compared with some known results and applied to the moving maximum field.

A family of generalized ageing intensity functions of univariate absolutely continuous lifetime random variables is introduced and studied. They allow the analysis and measurement of the ageing tendency from various points of view. Some of these generalized ageing intensities characterize families of distributions dependent on a single parameter, while others determine distributions uniquely. In particular, it is shown that the elasticity functions of various transformations of distributions that appear in lifetime analysis and reliability theory uniquely characterize the parent distribution. Moreover, the recognition of the shape of a properly chosen generalized ageing intensity estimate admits a simple identification of the data lifetime distribution.

Continuous-time branching processes (CTBPs) are powerful tools in random graph theory, but are not appropriate to describe real-world networks since they produce trees rather than (multi)graphs. In this paper we analyze collapsed branching processes (CBPs), obtained by a collapsing procedure on CTBPs, in order to define multigraphs where vertices have fixed out-degree m≥2. A key example consists of preferential attachment models (PAMs), as well as generalized PAMs where vertices are chosen according to their degree and age. We identify the degree distribution of CBPs, showing that it is closely related to the limiting distribution of the CTBP before collapsing. In particular, this is the first time that CTBPs are used to investigate the degree distribution of PAMs beyond the tree setting.

The titular question is investigated for fairly general semimartingale investment and asset price processes. A discrete-time consideration suggests a stochastic differential equation and an integral expression for the time value in the continuous-time framework. It is shown that the two are equivalent if the jump part of the price process converges. The integral expression, which is the answer to the titular question, is the sum of all investments accumulated with returns on the asset (a stochastic integral) plus a term that accounts for the possible covariation between the two processes. The arbitrage-free price of the time value is the expected value of the sum (i.e. integral) of all investments discounted with the locally risk-free asset.

We consider a class of weakly interacting particle systems of mean-field type. The interactions between the particles are encoded in a graph sequence, i.e. two particles are interacting if and only if they are connected in the underlying graph. We establish a law of large numbers for the empirical measure of the system that holds whenever the graph sequence is convergent to a graphon. The limit is the solution of a non-linear Fokker–Planck equation weighted by the (possibly random) graphon limit. In contrast with the existing literature, our analysis focuses on both deterministic and random graphons: no regularity assumptions are made on the graph limit and we are able to include general graph sequences such as exchangeable random graphs. Finally, we identify the sequences of graphs, both random and deterministic, for which the associated empirical measure converges to the classical McKean–Vlasov mean-field limit.

We study the multi-selection version of the so-called odds theorem by Bruss (2000). We observe a finite number of independent 0/1 (failure/success) random variables sequentially and want to select the last success. We derive the optimal selection rule when m (≥ 1) selection chances are given and find that the optimal rule has the form of a combination of multiple odds-sums. We provide a formula for computing the maximum probability of selecting the last success when we have m selection chances and also provide closed-form formulae for m = 2 and 3. For m = 2, we further give the bounds for the maximum probability of selecting the last success and derive its limit as the number of observations goes to ∞. An interesting implication of our result is that the limit of the maximum probability of selecting the last success for m = 2 is consistent with the corresponding limit for the classical secretary problem with two selection chances.