Multivariate density estimation using dimension reducing information and tail flattening transformations

Abstract

We propose a nonparametric multiplicative bias corrected transformation estimator designed for heavy tailed data. The multiplicative correction is based on prior knowledge and has a dimension reducing effect at the same time as the original dimension of the estimation problem is retained. Adding a tail flattening transformation improves the estimation significantly-particularly in the tail-and provides significant graphical advantages by allowing the density estimation to be visualized in a simple way. The combined method is demonstrated on a fire insurance data set and in a data-driven simulation study. © 2010 Elsevier B.V