1,689 research outputs found
Semiparametric Cross Entropy for rare-event simulation
The Cross Entropy method is a well-known adaptive importance sampling method
for rare-event probability estimation, which requires estimating an optimal
importance sampling density within a parametric class. In this article we
estimate an optimal importance sampling density within a wider semiparametric
class of distributions. We show that this semiparametric version of the Cross
Entropy method frequently yields efficient estimators. We illustrate the
excellent practical performance of the method with numerical experiments and
show that for the problems we consider it typically outperforms alternative
schemes by orders of magnitude
Efficient Rare-Event Simulation for Multiple Jump Events in Regularly Varying Random Walks and Compound Poisson Processes
We propose a class of strongly efficient rare event simulation estimators for
random walks and compound Poisson processes with a regularly varying
increment/jump-size distribution in a general large deviations regime. Our
estimator is based on an importance sampling strategy that hinges on the
heavy-tailed sample path large deviations result recently established in Rhee,
Blanchet, and Zwart (2016). The new estimators are straightforward to implement
and can be used to systematically evaluate the probability of a wide range of
rare events with bounded relative error. They are "universal" in the sense that
a single importance sampling scheme applies to a very general class of rare
events that arise in heavy-tailed systems. In particular, our estimators can
deal with rare events that are caused by multiple big jumps (therefore, beyond
the usual principle of a single big jump) as well as multidimensional processes
such as the buffer content process of a queueing network. We illustrate the
versatility of our approach with several applications that arise in the context
of mathematical finance, actuarial science, and queueing theory
Efficient Simulation and Conditional Functional Limit Theorems for Ruinous Heavy-tailed Random Walks
The contribution of this paper is to introduce change of measure based
techniques for the rare-event analysis of heavy-tailed stochastic processes.
Our changes-of-measure are parameterized by a family of distributions admitting
a mixture form. We exploit our methodology to achieve two types of results.
First, we construct Monte Carlo estimators that are strongly efficient (i.e.
have bounded relative mean squared error as the event of interest becomes
rare). These estimators are used to estimate both rare-event probabilities of
interest and associated conditional expectations. We emphasize that our
techniques allow us to control the expected termination time of the Monte Carlo
algorithm even if the conditional expected stopping time (under the original
distribution) given the event of interest is infinity -- a situation that
sometimes occurs in heavy-tailed settings. Second, the mixture family serves as
a good approximation (in total variation) of the conditional distribution of
the whole process given the rare event of interest. The convenient form of the
mixture family allows us to obtain, as a corollary, functional conditional
central limit theorems that extend classical results in the literature. We
illustrate our methodology in the context of the ruin probability , where is a random walk with heavy-tailed increments that have
negative drift. Our techniques are based on the use of Lyapunov inequalities
for variance control and termination time. The conditional limit theorems
combine the application of Lyapunov bounds with coupling arguments
Efficient rare-event simulation for multiple jump events in regularly varying random walks and compound Poisson processes
We propose a class of strongly efficient rare-event simulation estimators for random walks and compound Poisson processes with a regularly varying increment/jump-size distribution in a general large deviations regime. Our estimator is based on an importance sampling strategy that hinges on a recently established heavy-tailed sample-path large deviations result. The new estimators are straightforward to implement and can be used to systematically evaluate the probability of a wide range of rare events with bounded relative error. They are “universal” in the sense that a single importance sampling scheme applies to a very general class of rare events that arise in heavy-tailed systems. In particular, our estimators can deal with rare events that are caused by multiple big jumps (therefore, beyond the usual principle of a single big jump) as well as multidimensional processes such as the buffer content process of a queueing network. We illustrate the versatility of our approach with several applications that arise in the context of mathematical finance, actuarial science, and queueing theory
Efficient simulation of ruin probabilities when claims are mixtures of heavy and light tails
We consider the classical Cram\'er-Lundberg risk model with claim sizes that
are mixtures of phase-type and subexponential variables. Exploiting a specific
geometric compound representation, we propose control variate techniques to
efficiently simulate the ruin probability in this situation. The resulting
estimators perform well for both small and large initial capital. We quantify
the variance reduction as well as the efficiency gain of our method over
another fast standard technique based on the classical Pollaczek-Khinchine
formula. We provide a numerical example to illustrate the performance, and show
that for more time-consuming conditional Monte Carlo techniques, the new series
representation also does not compare unfavorably to the one based on the
Pollaczek- Khinchine formula.Comment: 18 pages, 8 figure
Linear Stochastic Fluid Networks: Rare-Event Simulation and Markov Modulation
We consider a linear stochastic fluid network under Markov modulation, with a
focus on the probability that the joint storage level attains a value in a rare
set at a given point in time. The main objective is to develop efficient
importance sampling algorithms with provable performance guarantees. For linear
stochastic fluid networks without modulation, we prove that the number of runs
needed (so as to obtain an estimate with a given precision) increases
polynomially (whereas the probability under consideration decays essentially
exponentially); for networks operating in the slow modulation regime, our
algorithm is asymptotically efficient. Our techniques are in the tradition of
the rare-event simulation procedures that were developed for the sample-mean of
i.i.d. one-dimensional light-tailed random variables, and intensively use the
idea of exponential twisting. In passing, we also point out how to set up a
recursion to evaluate the (transient and stationary) moments of the joint
storage level in Markov-modulated linear stochastic fluid networks
The Mathematics and Statistics of Quantitative Risk Management
[no abstract available
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