Maximum on a random time interval of a random walk with infinite mean
Denis Denisov

TL;DR
This paper investigates the asymptotic behavior of the maximum of a random walk with infinite mean over a random time interval defined by the stopping time when the walk first drops below or equals zero.
Contribution
It provides new asymptotic results for the probability that the maximum exceeds a large threshold in the context of random walks with infinite mean.
Findings
Asymptotic characterization of P(M_τ > x) as x → ∞
Results applicable to heavy-tailed distributions with infinite mean
Insights into the maximum behavior of such random walks
Abstract
Let be independent, identically distributed random variables with infinite mean Consider a random walk , a stopping time and let . We study the asymptotics for as .
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Maximum on a random time interval of a random walk with infinite mean
Denis Denisov
School of Mathematics, University of Manchester, Oxford Road, Manchester M13 9PL, UK
Abstract.
Let be independent, identically distributed random variables with infinite mean Consider a random walk , a stopping time and let . We study the asymptotics for as .
Key words and phrases:
Random walk, subexponential distribution, heavy-tailed distribution, busy period, busy cycle, single server queue
1991 Mathematics Subject Classification:
Primary 60G70; Secondary 60K30, 60K25
1. Introduction
Let , , … be independent random variables with a common distribution . Consider a random walk , and a stopping time
[TABLE]
Let and . We will consider the random walks with infinite or undefined mean () under the assumption that a. s. It is well known that the latter assumption is equivalent to a. s. and to (see Theorem 1 in [17, Chapter XII, Section 2]).
In the infinite-mean case, an important role is played by the negative truncated mean function
[TABLE]
where ; the function is continuous, increasing, and for any . It is known that if , then a.s. as if and only if
[TABLE]
see Corollary 1 in [16].
The aim of this paper is to study the asymptotics for in the infinite-mean case. In the finite-mean case, under the assumption that it was shown by Asmussen [1], see also [22] for the regularly varying case, that
[TABLE]
where The class of strongly subexponential distributions was introduced by Klüppelberg [23] and is defined as follows,
Definition 1**.**
A distribution function with finite belongs to the class of strong subexponential distributions if for all and
[TABLE]
This class is a proper subclass of class of subexponential distributions. It is shown in [23] that the Pareto, lognormal and Weibull distributions belong to the class as well.
The proof in [1] relied on the local asymptotics for found in [5] and, independently, in [3]. Foss and Zachary [19] pointed out the necessity of the condition and extended (2) to the case of an arbitrary stopping time with the finite mean . Then, Foss, Palmowsky and Zachary [20] found the asymptotics , for a more general class of stopping times , including those that may take infinite values or have infinite mean. They also proved that these asymptotics hold uniformly in all stopping times. A short proof of (2) may be found in [9],[10] and [14]. The former proof relies on the local asymptotics for and the latter proof uses the martingale properties of . The local asymptotics for were found in [13].
We will now introduce several subclasses of heavy-tailed distributions that will be used in the text.
Definition 2**.**
A distribution function is (right) long tailed () if, for any fixed ,
[TABLE]
An important subclass of heavy-tailed distributions is a class of subexponential distributions introduced independently by Chistyakov [7] and Chover et al [8].
Definition 3**.**
A distribution function on is subexponential () if for all and
[TABLE]
where are independent random variables with a common distribution function .
Sufficient conditions for a distribution to belong to the class may be found, or example, in [7], [23], [24] and [25]. The class includes, in particular, the following distributions on :
- (i)
the Pareto distribution with the tail , where ;
- (ii)
the lognormal distribution with the density with ;
- (iii)
the Weibull distribution with the tail with .
Another subclass of heavy-tailed distribution is a class of distributions with dominated varying tail.
Definition 4**.**
A distribution function is a dominated varying tail distribution function () if
[TABLE]
A distribution function from is not always subexponential. Indeed, all subexponential distributions are long-tailed, but there are some dominated varying distributions which are not long-tailed, see [15] and [21] for a counterexample. However, Klüppelberg [23] proved that if the mean is finite then . All regularly varying distribution functions belong to .
Definition 5**.**
A distribution function is regularly varying with index if, for all ,
[TABLE]
Examples of regularly varying distribution functions are the Pareto distribution function and with the tail An extensive survey of the regularly varying distributions may be found in [6]. It is shown in [7] that any subexponential distribution is long-tailed with necessity. The converse is not true, see [15] for a counterexample.
When the mean is finite, the derivation of (2) in [1],[19] and[10] heavily relied on the local asymptotics for a fixed as . In the infinite-mean case, these local asymptotics are not known. It seems that it can be found only in some particular cases. The reason for that are complications in the local renewal theorem in the infinite mean case, see [4] for the complete solution of the local renewal in the infinite mean case and its history. Therefore, we propose a slightly different approach: it appears that it is sufficient to prove directly that
[TABLE]
For that, we use a introduce a new class of heavy-tailed distributions,
Definition 6**.**
Let be a distribution function. A distribution function on belongs to () if
[TABLE]
This class is a natural extension of the class of subexponential distributions. Indeed, it follows from the definition that is subexponential if and only if . Then we study properties of this class. These properties (as well as its proofs) are rather close to that of subexponential distributions. Let be a distribution function on with the distribution tail
[TABLE]
The following theorems are the main results of this paper.
Theorem 7**.**
Suppose and condition (1) holds. If the distribution function then asymptotics (2) hold, i. e.
[TABLE]
Theorem 8**.**
Let and either of the following conditions holds
- (a)
; 2. (b)
* and condition (1) holds.*
Then .
2. Class and its basic properties
Definition 6 may be rephrased as follows. Consider independent random variables and with distributions and respectively. Then if and only if
[TABLE]
Basic properties of the class are very close to those of the class of subexponential distributions(see Lemmas 9–13). For a fine account of the theory of subexponential and local subexponential distributions we refer to [2] and [18].
Lemma 9**.**
Let be a distribution function on . Then if and only if there exists a function such that:
- (1)
; 2. (2)
; 3. (3)
Proof of Lemma 9. It is clear that if such a function exists, then and for all fixed Conversely, if and for some fixed , then one can construct a function satisfying conditions ((1)) and ((2)).
First, assume . Fix any . Then,
[TABLE]
By dividing both sides by , letting to infinity and rearranging the terms, we obtain
[TABLE]
and
[TABLE]
Consequently, there exists a function such that ((1)) and ((2)) hold. For this function, condition ((3)) holds.
Conversely, suppose that there is a function satisfying ((1))–((3)). Condition ((1)) implies
[TABLE]
and condition ((2)) implies
[TABLE]
Using condition ((3)) we obtain the required result
∎
Lemma 10**.**
(convolution closure) Let distribution functions belong to . Then
Proof. Take a function satisfying conditions ((1))–((3)) of Lemma 9 for both distributions and simultaneously. Then,
[TABLE]
By conditions ((1)) and ((3)) of Lemma 9,
[TABLE]
and, by condition ((2)),
[TABLE]
∎
By induction, Lemma 10 yields
Corollary 11**.**
Let . Then for any .
Throughout, denotes a distribution degenerated at [math].
Lemma 12**.**
Let . Then, for any , there exists such that, for any integer and for any ,
[TABLE]
Proof. Take any . Since , there exists such that
[TABLE]
Put . We use induction arguments. For the assertion clearly holds. Suppose that the assertion is true for and prove it for . For ,
[TABLE]
Further, for ,
[TABLE]
The latter follows from (6). ∎
Let be a sequence of i.i.d. non-negative random variables with a common distribution , and let be a random stopping time independent of . Put . Then the distribution of the randomly stopped sum is
[TABLE]
Lemma 13**.**
*Let belong to . Assume that for some . Then belongs to . *
Proof. The result follows from Corollary 11, Lemma 12 and from the dominated convergence theorem.
∎
It is known [23, Theorem 3.2] that if then is subexponential, i.e. . In the following Lemma, we generalize this assertion to obtain sufficient conditions for . Another extension may be found in [12, Lemma 9].
Lemma 14**.**
Let and on be such that . Then .
Proof. It follows from that , see [23, Theorem 3.2]. Then there exists a function satisfying conditions ((1)) and ((2)) of Lemma 9. Further,
[TABLE]
Since , for large enough . Then,
[TABLE]
the latter is due to . Then, condition of Lemma 9 is satisfied and ∎
As a simple corollary of Lemma 14, we can obtain sufficient conditions for the convolution to belong to the class .
Corollary 15**.**
Let and on be such that and . Then belongs to .
Let be a non-decreasing function on such that integral
[TABLE]
We assume that is subadditive, i.e. if for all . Let . Consider a distribution function on with the tail distribution
[TABLE]
Integrating (7) by parts, we obtain an equivalent representation for ,
[TABLE]
We now establish some properties of , which will be used in the next Section.
Lemma 16**.**
Let and as . Then,
[TABLE]
Proof. It follows from definition that, for all sufficiently large ,
[TABLE]
Since , there exists a function such that . Then,
[TABLE]
and
[TABLE]
∎
Lemma 17**.**
Let , and let be subadditive functions such that and
[TABLE]
Then
[TABLE]
Proof. By Lemma 16, and . Therefore, there exists a function such that conditions ((1)) and ((2)) of Lemma 9 hold for both distribution functions and . Integrating by parts ((3)) and using ((1)) and ((2)) , we obtain
[TABLE]
For any , we have
[TABLE]
Due to the subadditive property,
[TABLE]
Hence condition ((3)) of Lemma 9 holds for distribution functions and if and only if
[TABLE]
Then the assertion of Lemma follows from (9). ∎
Lemma 18**.**
Assume that and as . Then
Proof. It follows from Lemma 16 that . Therefore, there exists a function satisfying conditions ((1)) and ((2)). From the proof of Lemma 17, it is clear that if (10) holds then . Using the subadditive property of , we obtain
[TABLE]
Further,
[TABLE]
It follows from that . ∎
3. Proof of the main results
First recall a well-known construction of ladder moments and ladder heights [17, Chapter XII]. Let
[TABLE]
be the first (strict) ascending ladder epoch and put
[TABLE]
Let be a sequence of i.i.d.r.v.’s distributed as
[TABLE]
Let be a random variable, independent of the above sequence, such that Then
[TABLE]
We start with proving an auxiliary assertion.
Lemma 19**.**
Let . Then asymptotics (2) hold, i. e.
[TABLE]
Proof. The proof is carried out via standard arguments: we obtain the lower and the upper bounds, which are asymptotically equivalent. Let us start with the lower bound, which is valid without any assumptions on and . Fix a positive integer , then for any ,
[TABLE]
Let to obtain
[TABLE]
Now turn to the upper bound. For any ,
[TABLE]
for the latter see [17, Chapter XII, (2.7)]. Finally, it follows from , relation (11) and Lemma 13 that the distribution function of belongs to , that is
[TABLE]
∎
Now let us introduce a few more definitions. Let be the absolute value of the first non-positive sum and let be its distribution function. Define a renewal function
[TABLE]
Then is distributed as follows [17, Chapter XII]:
[TABLE]
We will need the following asymptotic estimates for the renewal function
Proposition 20**.**
(see [12, Corollary 2]) Suppose and condition (1) holds. Then,
[TABLE]
Proof of Theorem 7. We will prove that implies that . For that, we verify the conditions of Lemma 17.
First, by the properties of renewal functions, is subadditive. It follows from that This, the Key Renewal Theorem implies that .
Second, the function is subadditive as well:
[TABLE]
The latter inequality holds since is non-decreasing. Further, the function is non-decreasing, since
[TABLE]
Hence,
[TABLE]
Then, Lemma 17 and (13) imply that if and only if Consequently, and, by Lemma 19, asymptotics (2) hold. ∎
Proof of Theorem 8. Sufficiency of (a) follows from Lemma 14 and Lemma 16. Sufficiency of (b) follows from Lemma 18. ∎
Acknowledgements
The author is most grateful to Sergey Foss for drawing attention to this problem, valuable comments regarding the manuscript and a number of useful discussion.
The reference list from the paper itself. Each links out to its DOI / PubMed record.
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