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This article shows how multivariate elliptically contoured (EC) distributions, parameterized according to the mean vector and covariance matrix, can be built from univariate standard symmetric distributions. The obtained distributions are referred to as moment-parameterized EC (MEC) herein. As a further novelty, the article shows how to polynomially reshape MEC distributions and obtain distributions, called leptokurtic MEC (LMEC), having probability density functions characterized by a further parameter expressing their excess kurtosis with respect to the parent MEC distributions. Two estimation methods are discussed: the method of moments and the maximum likelihood. For illustrative purposes, normal, Laplace, and logistic univariate densities are considered to build MEC and LMEC models. An application to financial returns of a set of European stock indexes is finally presented. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The research objective of this paper is to handle situations where the empirical distribution of multivariate real-valued data is elliptical and with heavy tails. Many statistical models already exist that accommodate these peculiarities. This paper enriches this branch of literature by introducing the multivariate tail-inflated normal (MTIN) distribution, an elliptical heavy tails generalization of the multivariate normal (MN). The MTIN belongs to the family of MN scale mixtures by choosing a convenient continuous uniform as mixing distribution. Moreover, it has a closed-form for the probability density function characterized by only one additional 'inflation' parameter, with respect to the nested MN, governing the tail-weight. The moment generating function, and the first four moments, are also derived; interestingly, the latter always exist and the excess kurtosis can assume any positive value. The method of moments and maximum likelihood (ML) are considered for estimation. As concerns the latter, a direct approach, as well as a variant of the EM algorithm (namely, the ECME algorithm), are illustrated. Furthermore, a way to approximate covariance matrix of the ML estimator is suggested and the existence of the ML estimates is evaluated. Since the inflation parameter is estimated from the data, robust estimates of the mean vector of the nested MN distribution are automatically obtained by down-weighting. Simulations are performed to compare the estimation methods/algorithms, to investigate the ability of AIC and BIC to select among a set of candidate elliptical models, and to evaluate the robustness of these candidate methods when data are skewed. The findings are the following: ML is better than MM, direct ML is suggested for low dimensions, while the ECME algorithm is to be preferred when the number of variables is higher, AIC and BIC work comparably in selecting the true underlying model, and the MTIN outperforms the competing models in terms of robustness toward skew data. For illustrative purposes, the MTIN distribution is finally fitted to multivariate financial data and compared with other well-established multivariate elliptical distributions. The analysis shows how the proposed model represents a valid alternative to the considered competitors in terms of AIC and BIC, but also in reproducing the higher empirical kurtosis which is common in the financial context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Gaussian hidden Markov model (HMM) is widely considered for the analysis of heterogenous continuous multivariate longitudinal data. To robustify this approach with respect to possible elliptical heavy-tailed departures from normality, due to the presence of outliers, spurious points, or noise (collectively referred to asbad pointsherein), the contaminated Gaussian HMM is here introduced. The contaminated Gaussian distribution represents an elliptical generalization of the Gaussian distribution and allows for automatic detection of bad points in the same natural way as observations are typically assigned to the latent states in the HMM context. Once the model is fitted, each observation has a posterior probability of belonging to a particular state and, inside each state, of being a bad point or not. In addition to the parameters of the classical Gaussian HMM, for each state we have two more parameters, both with a specific and useful interpretation: one controls the proportion of bad points and one specifies their degree of atypicality. A sufficient condition for the identifiability of the model is given, an expectation-conditional maximization algorithm is outlined for parameter estimation and various operational issues are discussed. Using a large-scale simulation study, but also an illustrative artificial dataset, we demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed model in comparison with HMMs of different elliptical distributions, and we also evaluate the performance of some well-known information criteria in selecting the true number of latent states. The model is finally used to fit data on criminal activities in Italian provinces. Supplementary materials for this article are available online [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]