Truncated Estimation of Ratio Statistics with Application to Heavy Tail Distributions

Abstract

The problem of estimation of the heavy tail index is revisited from the point of view of truncated estimation. A class of novel estimators is introduced having guaranteed accuracy based on a sample of fixed size. The performance of these estimators is quantified both theoretically and in simulations over a host of relevant examples. It is also shown that in several cases the proposed estimators attain — within a logarithmic factor — the optimal parametric rate of convergence. The property of uniform asymptotic normality of the proposed estimators is established.