Refined Pickands estimators of the extreme value index

Abstract

Consider a distribution function that belongs to the weak domain of attraction of an extreme value distribution. The extreme value index β will be estimated by mixtures of Pickands estimators, where the weights are generated by a probability measure which satisfies a certain integrability condition. We prove a functional limit theorem for a process of Pickands estimators and asymptotic normality of the refined Pickands estimator. For negative β the new estimator is asymptotically superior to previously defined estimators. A simulation study also demonstrates the good small-sample performance. In particular, the estimator proves to be robust against an inappropriate choice of the number of upper order statistics used for estimation.