In the context of extreme climate change, we ask how to conduct expected utility analysis in the presence of catastrophic risks. Economists typically model decision making under risk and uncertainty by expected utility with constant relative risk aversion (power utility); statisticians typically...

This note proposes the Burr utility function. Burr utility is a flexible two-parameter family that behaves approximately power-like (CRRA) remote from the origin, while exhibiting exponential-like (CARA) features near the origin. It thus avoids the extreme behavior of the power family near the...

Consider a random sample from a continuous multivariate distribution function F with copula C. In order to test the null hypothesis that C belongs to a certain parametric family, we construct an under H0 asymptotically distribution-free process that serves as a tests generator. The process is a...

Let (X1, Y1), … , (Xn, Yn) be an i.i.d. sample from a bivariate distribution function that lies in the max-domain of attraction of an extreme value distribution. The asymptotic joint distribution of the standardized component-wise maxima max( Xi) and max(Yi) is then characterized by the...

A novel, general two-sample hypothesis testing procedure is established for testing the equality of tail copulas associated with bivariate data. More precisely, using an ingenious transformation of a natural two-sample tail copula process, a test process is constructed, which is shown to...

We introduce an accurate, easily implementable, and fast algorithm to compute optimal decisions in discrete-time long-horizon welfaremaximizing problems. The algorithm is useful when interest is only in the decisions up to period T, where T is small. It relies on a flexible parametrization of...