Multivariate extreme value distributions are a common choice for modelling multivariate extremes. In high dimensions, however, the construction of flexible and parsimonious models is challenging. We propose to combine bivariate extreme value distributions into a Markov random field with respect to a tree. Although in general not an extreme value distribution itself, this Markov tree is attracted by a multivariate extreme value distribution. The latter serves as a tree-based approximation to an unknown extreme value distribution with the given bivariate distributions as margins. Given data, we learn an appropriate tree structure by Prim's algorithm with estimated pairwise upper tail dependence coefficients or Kendall's tau values as edge weights. The distributions of pairs of connected variables can be fitted in various ways. The resulting tree-structured extreme value distribution allows for inference on rare event probabilities, as illustrated on river discharge data from the upper Danube basin.[-]

In extreme value statistics, the tail index is used to measure the occurrence and the intensity of extreme events. In many applied fields, the tail behavior of such events depends on explanatory variables. This article proposes an ensemble learning method for tail index regression which is called Hill random forests and combines Hill's approach on tail index estimation (Hill (1975)) with the aggregation of randomized decision trees based on the gamma deviance. We prove a consistency result when the tail index function is a multiplicative function.[-]

We give an asymptotic theory for the eigenvalues of the sample covariance matrix of a multivariate time series. The time series constitutes a linear process across time and between components. The input noise of the linear process has regularly varying tails with index $\alpha \in \left ( 0,4 \right )$; in particular, the time series has infinite fourth moment. We derive the limiting behavior for the largest eigenvalues of the sample covariance matrix and show point process convergence of the normalized eigenvalues. The limiting process has an explicit form involving points of a Poisson process and eigenvalues of a non-negative denite matrix. Based on this convergence we derive limit theory for a host of other continuous functionals of the eigenvalues, including the joint convergence of the largest eigenvalues, the joint convergence of the largest eigenvalue and the trace of the sample covariance matrix, and the ratio of the largest eigenvalue to their sum. This is joint work with Richard A. Davis (Columbia NY) and Oliver Pfaffel (Munich).[-]