Distributions with known initial hazard rate functions (Q1300919)

The purpose of this paper is to study the distributional properties of a non-negative random vector \({\mathbf X}= (X_1,X_2)\), based only on initial hazard rate functions. Section 2 investigates stochastic orderings for random vectors that have the same initial hazard rate function. Section 3 gives stochastic bounds on random vectors whose initial hazard rate functions are known. Examples and a counterexample illustrate the proposed approach. Section 4 includes comments about extending the obtained results to \(n\)-dimensional vectors \((n\geq 3)\). These results have various applications in the theory of competing risks.