We study a distributionally robust reinsurance problem with the risk measure being an expectile and under expected value premium principle. The mean and variance of the ground-up loss are known, but the loss distribution is otherwise unspecified. A minimax problem is formulated with its inner problem being a maximization problem over all distributions with known mean and variance. We show that the inner problem is equivalent to maximizing the problem over three-point distributions, reducing the infinite-dimensional optimization problem to a finite-dimensional optimization problem. The finite-dimensional optimization problem can be solved numerically. Numerical examples are given to study the impacts of the parameters involved.

A continuum of stochastic dominance rules, also referred to as fractional stochastic dominance (SD), was introduced by Müller, Scarsini, Tsetlin, and Winkler (2017) to cover preferences from first- to second-order SD. Fractional SD can be used to explain many individual behaviors in economics. In this paper we introduce the concept of fractional pure SD, a special case of fractional SD. We investigate further properties of fractional SD, for example the generating processes of fractional pure SD via $\gamma$ -transfers of probability, Yaari’s dual characterization by utilizing the special class of distortion functions, the separation theorem in terms of first-order SD and fractional pure SD, Strassen’s representation, and bivariate characterization. We also establish several closure properties of fractional SD under quantile truncation, under comonotonic sums, and under distortion, as well as its equivalence characterization. Examples of distributions ordered in the sense of fractional SD are provided.

We investigate stochastic comparisons of parallel systems (corresponding to the largest-order statistics) with respect to the reversed hazard rate and likelihood ratio orders for the proportional reversed hazard rate (PRHR) model. As applications of the main results, we obtain the equivalent characterizations of stochastic comparisons with respect to the reversed hazard rate and likelihood rate orders for the exponentiated generalized gamma and exponentiated Pareto distributions. Our results recover and strengthen some recent results in the literature.

In this study, we propose new risk measures from a regulator’s perspective on the regulatory capital requirements. The proposed risk measures possess many desired properties, including monotonicity, translation-invariance, positive homogeneity, subadditivity, nonnegative loading, and stop-loss order preserving. The new risk measures not only generalize the existing, well-known risk measures in the literature, including the Dutch, tail value-at-risk (TVaR), and expectile measures, but also provide new approaches to generate feasible and practical coherent risk measures. As examples of the new risk measures, TVaR-type generalized expectiles are investigated in detail. In particular, we present the dual and Kusuoka representations of the TVaR-type generalized expectiles and discuss their robustness with respect to the Wasserstein distance.

Log-concavity [log-convexity] and their various properties play an increasingly important role in probability, statistics, operations research and other fields. In this paper, we first establish general preservation theorems of log-concavity and log-convexity under operator $\phi \longmapsto T(\phi , \theta )=\mathbb {E}[\phi (X_\theta )]$, θ ∈ Θ, where Θ is an interval of real numbers or an interval of integers, and the random variable $X_\theta$ has a distribution function belonging to the family $\{F_\theta , \theta \in \Theta \}$ possessing the semi-group property. The proofs are based on the theory of stochastic comparisons and weighted distributions. The main results are applied to some special operators, for example, operators occurring in reliability, Bernstein-type operators and Beta-type operators. Several known results in the literature are recovered.

In this paper, we analyse the set of all possible aggregate distributions of the sum of standard uniform random variables, a simply stated yet challenging problem in the literature of distributions with given margins. Our main results are obtained for two distinct cases. In the case of dimension two, we obtain four partial characterization results. For dimension greater than or equal to three, we obtain a full characterization of the set of aggregate distributions, which is the first complete characterization result of this type in the literature for any choice of continuous marginal distributions.

Log-concave random variables and their various properties play an increasingly important role in probability, statistics, and other fields. For a distribution F, denote by 𝒟F the set of distributions G such that the convolution of F and G has a log-concave probability mass function or probability density function. In this paper, we investigate sufficient and necessary conditions under which 𝒟F ⊆ 𝒟G, where F and G belong to a parametric family of distributions. Both discrete and continuous settings are considered.

Generalized quantiles of a random variable were defined as the minimizers of a general asymmetric loss function, which include quantiles, expectiles and M-quantiles as their special cases. Expectiles have been suggested as potentially better alternatives to both Value-at-Risk and expected shortfall risk measures. In this paper, we first establish the first-order expansions of generalized quantiles for extreme risks as the confidence level α↑ 1, and then investigate the first-order and/or second-order expansions of expectiles of an extreme risk as α↑ 1 according to the underlying distribution belonging to the max-domain of attraction of the Fréchet, Weibull, and Gumbel distributions, respectively. Examples are also presented to examine whether and how much the first-order expansions have been improved by the second-order expansions.

Let X1, …, Xn be non-negative, independent and identically distributed random variables with a common distribution function F, and denote by X1:n ≤ ··· ≤ Xn:n the corresponding order statistics. In this paper, we investigate the second-order regular variation (2RV) of the tail probabilities of Xk:n and Xj:n − Xi:n under the assumption that $\bar {F}$ is of the 2RV, where 1 ≤ k ≤ n and 1 ≤ i < j ≤ n.

Consider a portfolio of n identically distributed risks X1, …, Xn with dependence structure modelled by an Archimedean survival copula. It is known that the probability of a large aggregate loss of $\sum\nolimits_{i=1}^{n} X_{i}$ is in proportion to the probability of a large individual loss of X1. The proportionality factor depends on the dependence strength and the tail behavior of the individual risk. In this paper, we establish analogous results for an aggregate loss of the form g(X1, …, Xn) under the more general model in which the Xi's have different but tail-equivalent distributions and the copula remains unchanged, where g is a homogeneous function of order 1. Properties of these factors are studied, and asymptotic Value-at-Risk behaviors of functions of dependent risks are also given. The main results generalize those in Wüthrich [16], Alink, Löwe, and Wüthrich [2], Barbe, Fougères, and Genest [4], and Embrechts, Nešlehová, and Wüthrich [9].

Linear combinations of independent random variables have been extensively studied in the literature. Xu & Hu [21] and Pan, Xu, & Hu [16] unified the study of linear combinations of independent random variables under the general setup. This paper is a companion one of these two papers. In this paper, we will further study this topic. The results are further generalized to the cases of permutation invariant random variables and of independent but not necessarily identically distributed random variables which are ordered in the likelihood ratio or the hazard ratio order.

The purpose of this study is two-fold. First, we investigate further properties of the second-order regular variation (2RV). These properties include the preservation properties of 2RV under the composition operation and the generalized inverse transform, among others. Second, we derive second-order expansions of the tail probabilities of convolutions of non-independent and identically distributed (i.i.d.) heavy-tail random variables, and establish second-order expansions of risk concentration under mild assumptions. The main results extend some ones in the literature from the i.i.d. case to non-i.i.d. case.

Let Sn(a1, …, an) be the sum of n independent exponential random variables with respective hazard rates a1, …, an or the sum of n independent geometric random variables with respective parameters a1, …, an. In this article, we investigate sufficient conditions on parameter vectors (a1, …, an) and under which Sn(a1, …, an) and are ordered in terms of the increasing convex and the reversed hazard rate orders for both exponential and geometric random variables and in terms of the mean residual life order for geometric variables. For the bivariate case, all of these sufficient conditions are also necessary. These characterizations are used to compare fail-safe systems with heterogeneous exponential components in the sense of the increasing convex and the reversed hazard rate orders. The main results complement several known ones in the literature.

The purpose of this article is to present several equivalent characterizations of comparing the largest-order statistics and sample ranges of two sets of n independent exponential random variables with respect to different stochastic orders, where the random variables in one set are heterogeneous and the random variables in the other set are identically distributed. The main results complement and extend several known results in the literature. The geometric distribution can be regarded as the discrete counterpart of the exponential distribution. We also study the orderings of the largest-order statistics from geometric random variables and point out similarities and differences between orderings of the largest-order statistics from geometric variables and from exponential variables.