Asymptotics of trimmed CUSUM statistics

There is a wide literature on change point tests, but the case of variables with infinite variances is essentially unexplored. In this paper we address this problem by studying the asymptotic behavior of trimmed CUSUM statistics. We show that in a location model with i.i.d. errors in the domain of attraction of a stable law of parameter $0<\alpha <2$, the appropriately trimmed CUSUM process converges weakly to a Brownian bridge. Thus, after moderate trimming, the classical method for detecting change points remains valid also for populations with infinite variance. We note that according to the classical theory, the partial sums of trimmed variables are generally not asymptotically normal and using random centering in the test statistics is crucial in the infinite variance case. We also show that the partial sums of truncated and trimmed random variables have different asymptotic behavior. Finally, we discuss resampling procedures which enable one to determine critical values in the case of small and moderate sample sizes.Comment: Published in at http://dx.doi.org/10.3150/10-BEJ318 the Bernoulli (http://isi.cbs.nl/bernoulli/) by the International Statistical Institute/Bernoulli Society (http://isi.cbs.nl/BS/bshome.htm

The limit distribution of the maximum increment of a random walk with regularly varying jump size distribution

In this paper, we deal with the asymptotic distribution of the maximum increment of a random walk with a regularly varying jump size distribution. This problem is motivated by a long-standing problem on change point detection for epidemic alternatives. It turns out that the limit distribution of the maximum increment of the random walk is one of the classical extreme value distributions, the Fr\'{e}chet distribution. We prove the results in the general framework of point processes and for jump sizes taking values in a separable Banach space.Comment: Published in at http://dx.doi.org/10.3150/10-BEJ255 the Bernoulli (http://isi.cbs.nl/bernoulli/) by the International Statistical Institute/Bernoulli Society (http://isi.cbs.nl/BS/bshome.htm

Signalling the Dotcom bubble: a multiple changes in persistence approach

This study investigates multiple changes in persistence in the dividend-price and price-earnings ratio of the NASDAQ composite index. Recent time series methods that are capable of signalling and dating asset price bubbles are employed, in particular the method developed by Leybourne et al. (2007). The method allows for breaks between periods in which the data are integrated of order zero I(0) and integrated of order one I(1). The results confirm the existence of the so-called Dotcom bubble with its start and end dates. Furthermore, an unexpected negative bubble was also identified, extending from the beginning of the 1970s to the beginning of the 1990s, suggesting that the NASDAQ stock prices were below their fundamental values as indicated by their dividend yields, finding not previously reported in the literature. As the tools used by regulators take considerable time to take effect, methods capable of picking up warnings signals of the start of a bubble could be very useful. We conjecture that the methodology can also be applied to study recent phenomena in real estate, commodity and foreign exchange markets

Break detection in the covariance structure of multivariate time series models

In this paper, we introduce an asymptotic test procedure to assess the stability of volatilities and cross-volatilites of linear and nonlinear multivariate time series models. The test is very flexible as it can be applied, for example, to many of the multivariate GARCH models established in the literature, and also works well in the case of high dimensionality of the underlying data. Since it is nonparametric, the procedure avoids the difficulties associated with parametric model selection, model fitting and parameter estimation. We provide the theoretical foundation for the test and demonstrate its applicability via a simulation study and an analysis of financial data. Extensions to multiple changes and the case of infinite fourth moments are also discussed.Comment: Published in at http://dx.doi.org/10.1214/09-AOS707 the Annals of Statistics (http://www.imstat.org/aos/) by the Institute of Mathematical Statistics (http://www.imstat.org

High-dimensional change point detection for mean and location parameters

Change point inference refers to detection of structural breaks of a sequence observation, which may have one or more distributional shifts subject to models such as mean or covariance changes. In this dissertation, we consider the offline multiple change point problem that the sample size is fixed in advance or after observation. In particular, we concentrate on high-dimensional setup where the dimension $p$ can be much larger than the sample size $n$ and traditional distribution assumptions can easily fail. The goal is to employ non-parametric approaches to identify change points without involving intermediate estimation to cross-sectional dependence. In the first part, we consider cumulative sum (CUSUM) statistics that are widely used in the change point inference and identification. We study two problems for high-dimensional mean vectors based on the $\ell^{\infty}$-norm of the CUSUM statistics. For the problem of testing for the existence of a change point in an independent sample generated from the mean-shift model, we introduce a Gaussian multiplier bootstrap to calibrate critical values of the CUSUM test statistics in high dimensions. The proposed bootstrap CUSUM test is fully data-dependent and it has strong theoretical guarantees under arbitrary dependence structures and mild moment conditions. Specifically, we show that with a boundary removal parameter the bootstrap CUSUM test enjoys the uniform validity in size under the null and it achieves the minimax separation rate under the sparse alternatives when $p \gg n$. Once a change point is detected, we estimate the change point location by maximizing the $\ell^{\infty}$-norm of the generalized CUSUM statistics at two different weighting scales. The first estimator is based on the covariance stationary CUSUM statistics, and we prove its consistency in estimating the location at the nearly parametric rate $n^{-1/2}$ for sub-exponential observations. The second estimator is based on non-stationary CUSUM statistics, assigning less weights on the boundary data points. In the latter case, we show that it achieves the nearly best possible rate of convergence on the order $n^{-1}$. In both cases, dimension impacts the rate of convergence only through the logarithm factors, and therefore consistency of the CUSUM location estimators is possible when $p$ is much larger than $n$. In the presence of multiple change points, we propose a principled bootstrap-assisted binary segmentation (BABS) algorithm to dynamically adjust the change point detection rule and recursively estimate their locations. We derive its rate of convergence under suitable signal separation and strength conditions. The results derived are non-asymptotic and we provide extensive simulation studies to assess the finite sample performance. The empirical evidence shows an encouraging agreement with our theoretical results. In the second part, we analyze the problem of change point detection for high-dimensional distributions in a location family. We propose a robust, tuning-free (i.e., fully data-dependent), and easy-to-implement change point test formulated in the multivariate $U$-statistics framework with anti-symmetric and nonlinear kernels. It achieves the robust purpose in a non-parametric setting when CUSUM statistics are sensitive to outliers and heavy-tailed distributions. Specifically, the within-sample noise is canceled out by anti-symmetry of the kernel, while the signal distortion under certain nonlinear kernels can be controlled such that the between-sample change point signal is magnitude preserving. A (half) jackknife multiplier bootstrap (JMB) tailored to the change point detection setting is proposed to calibrate the distribution of our $\ell^{\infty}$-norm aggregated test statistic. Subject to mild moment conditions on kernels, we derive the uniform rates of convergence for the JMB to approximate the sampling distribution of the test statistic, and analyze its size and power properties. Extensions to multiple change point testing and estimation are discussed with illustration from numeric studies