On the accuracy of phase-type approximations of heavy-tailed risk models

Numerical evaluation of ruin probabilities in the classical risk model is an important problem. If claim sizes are heavy-tailed, then such evaluations are challenging. To overcome this, an attractive way is to approximate the claim sizes with a phase-type distribution. What is not clear though is how many phases are enough in order to achieve a specific accuracy in the approximation of the ruin probability. The goals of this paper are to investigate the number of phases required so that we can achieve a pre-specified accuracy for the ruin probability and to provide error bounds. Also, in the special case of a completely monotone claim size distribution we develop an algorithm to estimate the ruin probability by approximating the excess claim size distribution with a hyperexponential one. Finally, we compare our approximation with the heavy traffic and heavy tail approximations.Comment: 24 pages, 13 figures, 8 tables, 38 reference

Stochastic Processes with Applications

Stochastic processes have wide relevance in mathematics both for theoretical aspects and for their numerous real-world applications in various domains. They represent a very active research field which is attracting the growing interest of scientists from a range of disciplines.This Special Issue aims to present a collection of current contributions concerning various topics related to stochastic processes and their applications. In particular, the focus here is on applications of stochastic processes as models of dynamic phenomena in research areas certain to be of interest, such as economics, statistical physics, queuing theory, biology, theoretical neurobiology, and reliability theory. Various contributions dealing with theoretical issues on stochastic processes are also included

Asymptotic Expansions of Defective Renewal Equations with Applications to Perturbed Risk Models and Processor Sharing Queues.

We consider asymptotic expansions for defective and excessive renewal equations that are close to being proper. These expansions are applied to the analysis of processor sharing queues and perturbed risk models, and yield approximations that can be useful in applications where moments are computable, but the distribution is not. © 2010 Springer-Verlag

Untangling hotel industry’s inefficiency: An SFA approach applied to a renowned Portuguese hotel chain

The present paper explores the technical efficiency of four hotels from Teixeira Duarte Group - a renowned Portuguese hotel chain. An efficiency ranking is established from these four hotel units located in Portugal using Stochastic Frontier Analysis. This methodology allows to discriminate between measurement error and systematic inefficiencies in the estimation process enabling to investigate the main inefficiency causes. Several suggestions concerning efficiency improvement are undertaken for each hotel studied.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio