Bayesian Estimation for the Centered Parameterization of the Skew-Normal Distribution

The skew-normal (SN) distribution is a generalization of the normal dis- tribution, where a shape parameter is added to adopt skewed forms. The SN distribution has some of the properties of a univariate normal distribu- tion, which makes it very attractive from a practical standpoint; however, it pr...

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Bibliographic Details
Authors: Paulino Pérez-Rodríguez, José A. Villaseñor, Sergio Pérez, Javier Suárez
Format: article
Status:Published version
Publication Date:2017
Country:México
Institution:Colegio de Postgraduados
Repository:Redalyc-COLPOS
OAI Identifier:oai:redalyc.org:89949526008
Online Access:https://www.redalyc.org/articulo.oa?id=89949526008
Access Level:Open access
Keyword:Física, Astronomía y Matemáticas
Prior Dis
tribution
Metropolis
Point Estimation
Hastings Algorithm
Description
Summary:The skew-normal (SN) distribution is a generalization of the normal dis- tribution, where a shape parameter is added to adopt skewed forms. The SN distribution has some of the properties of a univariate normal distribu- tion, which makes it very attractive from a practical standpoint; however, it presents some inference problems. Specifically, the maximum likelihood es- timator for the shape parameter tends to infinity with a positive probability. A new Bayesian approach is proposed in this paper which allows to draw inferences on the parameters of this distribution by using improper prior distributions in the “centered parametrization” for the location and scale pa- rameter and a Beta-type for the shape parameter. Samples from posterior distributions are obtained by using the Metropolis-Hastings algorithm. A simulation study shows that the mode of the posterior distribution appears to be a good estimator in terms of bias and mean squared error. A com- parative study with similar proposals for the SN estimation problem was undertaken. Simulation results provide evidence that the proposed method is easier to implement than previous ones. Some applications and compar- isons are also included.