Stochastic orders (Q852427)

This book is a wide, well written and clearly organized extension of the first six chapters of the authors' book, ``Stochastic orders and their applications.'' (1994; Zbl 0806.62009), and collects in one place essentially all that is known on the subject of stochastic orders up to 2006. In addition, the book illustrates some of the usefulness and applicability of the theory and now it is the most complete monograph in this field. The text is divided into nine chapters. The first two chapters are devoted to univariate stochastic orders defined by properties of distribution functions, densities, hazard rates and mean residual life functions of comparable probability distributions. Chapter 3 contains definitions and properties of univariate variability orders (convex, dispersive, excess wealth, peakedness). Univariate monotone convex and transform orders (convex, star, superadditive, the Laplace transform) are studied in Chapters 4 and 5. The analogous orders for multivariate distribution functions are considered in Chapters 6 and 7. Chapters 8 deals with stochastic convexity and concavity. The last chapter is completely new in comparison with the earlier book of the authors and is devoted to positive dependence orders. At the end of each chapter there are ``Complements'' containing comments of the presented results and a great number of references (578 records). The book will be useful for a wide spectrum of researchers in the area of probability, statistics, operations research, actuarial mathematics, economics, etc.