1. Introduction
Stable Lévy motions owe their importance in both theory and practice to, among other factors, price fluctuations. The seeming departure from normality, along with the demand for a self-similar model for financial data (i.e., one in which the shape of the distribution for yearly asset price changes resembles that of the constituent daily or monthly price changes), led Benoît Mandelbrot to propose that cotton prices follow an -stable Lévy motion with equal to . The high variability of the stable Lévy motions means that they are much more likely to take values far away from the median, and this is one of the reasons why they play an important role in modeling. Stable Lévy motions have been frequently used to model such diverse phenomena as gravitational fields of stars, temperature distributions in nuclear reactors and stresses in crystalline lattices, as well as stock market prices, gold prices and other financial data.
Recall that a stochastic process is called a (standard) –stable Lévy motion if the following three conditions hold:
- (C1)
almost surely;
- (C2)
L has independent increments;
- (C3)
for any and for some .
Here,
stands for a stable random variable with index of stability
, scale parameter
, skewness parameter
and a shift parameter equal to
When
we denote
L as
for clarity. Such processes have stationary increments, and they are
–self-similar (unless
); that is, for all
the processes
and
have the same finite-dimensional distributions. An
–stable Lévy motion is symmetric when
. Recall that
governs the intensity of jumps. When
is small, the intensity of jumps is large. Contrarily, when
is large, the intensity of jumps is small; see
Figure 1.
However, the stationary property of their increments restricts the uses of stable Lévy motions in some situations, and generalizations are needed for instance to model real-world phenomena such as annual temperature (rainfall, wind speed), epileptic episodes in EEG, stock market prices over long periods and daily internet traffic. A significant feature of these cases is that the “local intensity of jumps” varies with time t; that is, varies with time t.
One way to deal with such a variation is to set up a class of processes whose stability index is a function of t. More precisely, one aims at defining non-stationary increments processes that are, at each time t, “tangent” (in a certain sense explained below) to a stable process with stability index . Such processes are called multistable Lévy motions (MsLM); these are non-stationary increments extensions of stable Lévy motions.
Formally, one says that a stochastic process
is
multistable if, for almost all
,
X is
localizable at
t with tangent process
an
–stable process,
. Recall that
is said to be
–localizable at
t (cf. Falconer [
1,
2]), with
, if there exists a non-trivial process
, called the tangent process of
X at
t, such that
where convergence is in finite dimensional distributions. By (
1), a multistable process is also a multifractional process (cf. [
3,
4] for such processes). Two such extensions exist [
5]:
- 1.
The
field-based MsLM admit the following series representation:
where
is a Poisson point process on
with the Lebesgue measure as a mean measure
,
and
Their joint characteristic function is as follows:
for
and
These processes have correlated increments, and they are localizable as soon as the function
is Hölder-continuous.
- 2.
The
independent-increments MsLM admit the following series representation:
As their name indicates, they have independent increments, and their joint characteristic function is as follows:
for
and
These processes are localizable as soon as the function
satisfies the following condition uniformly for all
x in finite interval as
; see [
5]:
In particular, independent-increments MsLM are, at each time t, “tangent ” to a stable Lévy process with stability index .
Of course, when
is a constant
for all
t, both
and
are simply the Poisson representation of
–stable Lévy motion
In general,
and
are semi-martingales. For more properties of
and
such as Ferguson-Klass-LePage series representations, Hölder exponents, stochastic Hölder continuity, strong localizability, functional central limit theorem and the Hausdorff dimension of the range, we refer to [
6,
7,
8]. See also [
9,
10] for wavelet series representation of the multifractional multistable processes.
Similar to the MsLM, we find that some stochastic processes have the property that the “local intensity of jumps” varies with the values of the processes. For instance, when one analysis certain records such as the stock market prices (see
Figure 2), the exchange rates (see
Figure 3) or annual temperature (see
Figure 4), it seems that there exits a relation between the local value of the records, denoted by
, and the local intensity of jumps, measured by the index of stability
.
This calls for the development of the self-stabilizing models, i.e., a class of stochastic processes S satisfying a functional equation of the form: almost surely for all t, where g is a smooth deterministic function. All the information concerning the future evolution of is then incorporated in which may be estimated from historical data under the assumption that the relation between S and does not vary in time. This class of models is in a sense analogous to local volatility models: instead of having the local volatility depending on S, it is the local intensity of jumps that does so. This class of models is also in a sense analogous to MsLM: instead of the “local intensity of jumps” depending on time t, the “local intensity of jumps” depending on the values of
The main aim of this paper is to establish the self-stabilizing models, called the self-stabilizing processes (cf. Falconer and Lévy Véhel [
11]), via a Donsker-type construction. Formally, one says that a stochastic process
is a self-stabilizing process if, for almost surely all
,
S is localizable at
t with tangent process
a
–stable process, with respect to the conditional probability measure
In formula, it holds
where convergence is in finite dimensional distributions with respect to
Formula (
8) states that “local intensity of jumps” varies with the values of
, instead of time
t. In particular, if
equality (
8) implies that
provided that
r is small. Thus, it is natural to define
where
which illustrates the use of our method to prove the existence of these self-stabilizing processes. The main difficulty associated with using this method involves proving the weak convergence of
To this end, we make use of the Arzelà–Ascoli theorem and its generalization.
The paper is organized as follows. In
Section 2, we establish a self-stabilizing and self-scaling process. In
Section 3, we show that it has many good properties, such as stochastic Hölder continuity and strong localizability. In particular, it is simultaneously a Markov process, a martingale (when
), and a self-regulating process. Conclusions are presented in
Section 4. In
Appendix A, we give the Arzelà–Ascoli theorem and its generalization.
2. Existence of Self-Stabilizing and Self-Scaling Process
In this section, we make use of the general version of the Arzelà–Ascoli theorem to prove the existence of this self-stabilizing process. Moreover, our self-stabilizing process is also a self-scaling process. We call a random process self-scaling if the scale parameter is also a function of the value of the process.
Definition 1.
We call the sequence subequicontinuous on if for any there exist and a sequence of nonnegative numbers as such that, for all functions in the sequence,whenever In particular, if for all , then is equicontinuous. The following lemma gives a general version of the Arzelà–Ascoli theorem, whose proof is given in
Appendix A.
Lemma 1.
Assume that is a sequence of real-valued continuous functions defined on a closed and bounded set If this sequence is uniformly bounded and subequicontinuous, then there exists a subsequence that converges uniformly.
We give an approximation for a self-stabilizing and self-scaling process via Markov processes. The main idea behind this method is that the unknown stability index and scale parameter of the process at point are replaced by the predictable values and , respectively. When it is obvious that in distribution, provided that g is a Hölder function and that almost surely. The same argument holds for
Theorem 1.
Let be a Hölder function defined on with values in the range .
Let be a positive Hölder function defined on and assume that lies within the range There exists a self-stabilizing and self-scaling process such that it is tangent at u to a stable Lévy process under the conditional expectation given as .
Proof. The theorem can be proved in four steps.
Step 1. Donsker’s construction: For all
and all
set
where
is a symmetric
–stable random variable
with unit-scale parameters and is independent of the random variables
for a given
. Then, we define a sequence of partial sums
In particular, when
and
, this method is known as Donsker’s construction (cf. Theorem 16.1 of Billingsley [
12] for instance). Define the processes
, where
Then, for given
n,
is a Markov process. For simplicity of notation, denote this as
According to the construction of
we have
, and, for all
It is easy to see that, for all
satisfying
,
where the last line follows from (
10). In particular, it can be rewritten in the following form:
where
as before. More generally, we have, for all
and
,
where the last line follows from (
12). Since
is a Markov process. Equality (
13) also holds if
is replaced by
where
and
Set
and set
for all
and
It is worth noting that the following estimation holds:
Recall
and
Then, we may assume that
lies in the range
By (
11), it is easy to see that the following inequalities hold for all
and
Thus, for all
By a similar argument, we have, for all
The inequalities (
14) and (
15) can be rewritten in the following form: for all
Step 2. Sub-equicontinuous for : Denote
by
Next, we prove that for given
the sequence
is subequicontinuous on
By Theorems A2 and (
14), it is easy to see that
is equicontinuous with respect to
However, we can even prove a better result, that is
is Hölder equicontinuous of order
with respect to
By (
14) and the Billingsley inequality (cf. p. 47 of [
12]), it is easy to see that, for all
with
and all
Similarly, by (
15), for all
with
and all
For all
we have
and
The random variable
is dominated by the constant 2. Therefore, (
19) and (
17) imply that
where
C is a constant only depending on
M and
Thus,
is Hölder equicontinuous of order
with respect to
Similarly, the inequalities (
20) and (
18) imply that
where
C is a constant depending on
and
The last inequality implies that for all
is Hölder subequicontinuous of order
with respect to
Notice that
Thus, the sequence
is subequicontinuous on
Step 3. Convergence for a subsequence: Denote by
For every given
and
, by Lemma 1, there exists a subsequence
of
and a function
defined on
such that
uniformly on
By induction, the following relation holds:
Hence, the diagonal subsequence
converges to
on
Moreover, by (
14) and (
15), the following inequalities hold for all
:
and, for all
By the Lévy continuous theorem, these exists a random process
such that
converges to
in distribution for any
as
Similarly, by (
13) instead of by (
11), we can prove that for all
there exists a random process
such that
converges to
in finite dimensional distribution, where
is a subsequence of
Letting
by (
13) and the dominated convergence theorem, we have, for all
Equality (
23) also holds if
is replaced by
where
and
Step 4. Self-stabilizing for the limiting process: Next, we prove that
S is a self-stabilizing process, that is,
S is localizable at
u to a
–stable Lévy motion
under the conditional expectation given as
. For any
and
, from equality (
23), it is easy to see that
Setting
, we find that
From equality (
23), by an argument similar to (
14), we obtain, for all
and all
with
,
By an argument similar to that of (
18), it follows that, for
and
,
where
C is a constant depending on
and
Since
g and
are both Hölder functions, by (
25), we get
and
in probability with respect to
Hence, using the dominated convergence theorem, we have
which means that
S is localizable at
u to a
–stable Lévy motion
under the conditional expectation given as
, where
is the standard symmetric
–stable Lévy motion. This completes the proof of the theorem. □
Remark 1.
Let us comment on Theorem 1.
- 1.
A slightly different method by which to approximate the self-stabilizing and self-scaling process S can be described as follows. Define By an argument similar to the proof of Theorem 1, there exists a subsequence of such that converges to the process S in finite dimensional distribution. Notice that with this method, all of the random variables are changed from to even is a constant. However, in the proof of Theorem 1, we only add one random variable from to when a constant.
- 2.
Notice that if we define for all then, by a similar argument of Theorem 1, we can define the self-stabilizing and self-scaling process on the positive whole line via the limit of - 3.
An interesting question is whether converges to in finite dimensional distribution. To answer this question, we need a judgment that if every subsequence of has a further subsequence that converges to x, then converges to According to the proof of the theorem, it is known that every subsequence of has a further subsequence that converges to S in finite dimensional distribution, where S is defined by (23). Thus, the question reduces to proving that (23) defines a unique process S.