In this paper we investigate the asymptotic behavior of sequences of successive Steiner and Minkowski symmetrizations. We state an equivalence result between the convergences of those sequences for Minkowski and Steiner symmetrizations. Moreover, in the case of independent (and not necessarily identically distributed) directions, we prove the almost-sure convergence of successive symmetrizations at exponential rate for Minkowski, and at rate e^-c√n with c > 0 for Steiner.

We study a parametric class of isotropic but not necessarily stationary Poisson hyperplane tessellations in n-dimensional Euclidean space. Our focus is on the volume of the zero cell, i.e. the cell containing the origin. As a main result, we obtain an explicit formula for the variance of the volume of the zero cell in arbitrary dimensions. From this formula we deduce the asymptotic behaviour of the volume of the zero cell as the dimension goes to ∞.

We consider homogeneous STIT tessellations Y in the ℓ-dimensional Euclidean space R^ℓ and show the triviality of the tail σ-algebra. This is a sharpening of the mixing result by Lachièze-Rey (2001).

We study the growth of a population of bacteria in a dynamical hostile environment corresponding to the immune system of the colonized organism. The immune cells evolve as subcritical open clusters of oriented percolation and are perpetually reinforced by an immigration process, while the bacteria try to grow as a supercritical oriented percolation in the remaining empty space. We prove that the population of bacteria grows linearly when it survives. From this perspective, we build general tools to study dependent oriented percolation models issued from renormalization processes.

We establish recurrence and transience criteria for critical branching processes in random environments with immigration. These results are then applied to the recurrence and transience of a recurrent random walk in a random environment on Z disturbed by cookies inducing a drift to the right of strength 1.

Age-dependent branching processes are increasingly used in analyses of biological data. Despite being central to most statistical procedures, the identifiability of these models has not been studied. In this paper we partition a family of age-dependent branching processes into equivalence classes over which the distribution of the population size remains identical. This result can be used to study identifiability of the offspring and lifespan distributions for parametric families of branching processes. For example, we identify classes of Markov processes that are not identifiable. We show that age-dependent processes with (nonexponential) gamma-distributed lifespans are identifiable and that Smith-Martin processes are not always identifiable.

In this paper we propose a new modelling framework for electricity futures markets based on so-called ambit fields. The new model can capture many of the stylised facts observed in electricity futures and is highly analytically tractable. We discuss martingale conditions, option pricing, and change of measure within the new model class. Also, we study the corresponding model for the spot price, which is implied by the new futures model, and show that, under certain regularity conditions, the implied spot price can be represented in law as a volatility modulated Volterra process.

We study de Finetti's optimal dividend problem, also known as the optimal harvesting problem, in the dual model. In this model, the firm value is affected both by continuous fluctuations and by upward directed jumps. We use a fixed point method to show that the solution of the optimal dividend problem with jumps can be obtained as the limit of a sequence of stochastic control problems for a diffusion. In each problem, the optimal dividend strategy is of barrier type, and the rate of convergence of the barrier and the corresponding value function is exponential.

Transform-based algorithms have wide applications in applied probability, but rarely provide computable error bounds to guarantee the accuracy. We propose an inversion algorithm for two-sided Laplace transforms with computable error bounds. The algorithm involves a discretization parameter C and a truncation parameter N. By choosing C and N using the error bounds, the algorithm can achieve any desired accuracy. In many cases, the bounds decay exponentially, leading to fast computation. Therefore, the algorithm is especially suitable to provide benchmarks. Examples from financial engineering, including valuation of cumulative distribution functions of asset returns and pricing of European and exotic options, show that our algorithm is fast and easy to implement.

We study nonparametric estimation problems for discrete-time stochastic networks of Geom^X/G/∞ queues. We assume that we are only able to observe the external arrival and external departure processes at the nodes over a stretch of time. Based on such incomplete information of the system, we aim to construct estimators for the unknown general service time distributions at the nodes without imposing any parametric condition. We propose two different estimation approaches. The first approach is based on the construction of a so-called sequence of differences, and a crucial relation between the expected number of external departures at a node and specific sojourn time distributions in the network. The second approach directly utilizes the structure of the cross-covariance functions between external arrival and departure processes at the nodes. Both methods lead to deconvolution problems which we solve explicitly. A detailed simulation study illustrates the numerical performances of our estimators and shows their advantages and disadvantages.

We focus on a particular connection between queueing and risk models in a multidimensional setting. We first consider the joint workload process in a queueing model with parallel queues and simultaneous arrivals at the queues. For the case that the service times are ordered (from largest in the first queue to smallest in the last queue), we obtain the Laplace-Stieltjes transform of the joint stationary workload distribution. Using a multivariate duality argument between queueing and risk models, this also gives the Laplace transform of the survival probability of all books in a multivariate risk model with simultaneous claim arrivals and the same ordering between claim sizes. Other features of the paper include a stochastic decomposition result for the workload vector, and an outline of how the two-dimensional risk model with a general two-dimensional claim size distribution (hence, without ordering of claim sizes) is related to a known Riemann boundary-value problem.

Stochastic geometry models for wireless communication networks have recently attracted much attention. This is because the performance of such networks critically depends on the spatial configuration of wireless nodes and the irregularity of the node configuration in a real network can be captured by a spatial point process. However, most analysis of such stochastic geometry models for wireless networks assumes, owing to its tractability, that the wireless nodes are deployed according to homogeneous Poisson point processes. This means that the wireless nodes are located independently of each other and their spatial correlation is ignored. In this work we propose a stochastic geometry model of cellular networks such that the wireless base stations are deployed according to the Ginibre point process. The Ginibre point process is one of the determinantal point processes and accounts for the repulsion between the base stations. For the proposed model, we derive a computable representation for the coverage probability - the probability that the signal-to-interference-plus-noise ratio (SINR) for a mobile user achieves a target threshold. To capture its qualitative property, we further investigate the asymptotics of the coverage probability as the SINR threshold becomes large in a special case. We also present the results of some numerical experiments.

We consider a multivariate continuous-time ARMA (MCARMA) process sampled at a high-frequency time grid {h_n, 2h_n, . . ., nh_n}, where h_n ↓ 0 and nh_n → ∞ as n → ∞, or at a constant time grid where h_n = h. For this model, we present the asymptotic behavior of the properly normalized partial sum to a multivariate stable or a multivariate normal random vector depending on the domain of attraction of the driving Lévy process. Furthermore, we derive the asymptotic behavior of the sample variance. In the case of finite second moments of the driving Lévy process the sample variance is a consistent estimator. Moreover, we embed the MCARMA process in a cointegrated model. For this model, we propose a parameter estimator and derive its asymptotic behavior. The results are given for more general processes than MCARMA processes and contain some asymptotic properties of stochastic integrals.

We study the existence of a unique stationary distribution and ergodicity for a two-dimensional affine process. Its first coordinate process is supposed to be a so-called α-root process with α ∈ (1, 2]. We prove the existence of a unique stationary distribution for the affine process in the α ∈ (1, 2] case; furthermore, we show ergodicity in the α = 2 case.