Assessing Risk Heterogeneity through Heavy-Tailed Frequency and Severity Mixtures

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Autori principali: Powers, Michael R., Xu, Jiaxin
Natura: Preprint
Pubblicazione: 2025
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author Powers, Michael R.
Xu, Jiaxin
author_facet Powers, Michael R.
Xu, Jiaxin
contents The analysis of risk typically involves dividing a random damage-generation process into separate frequency (event-count) and severity (damage-magnitude) components. In the present article, we construct canonical families of mixture distributions for each of these components, based on a Negative Binomial kernel for frequencies and a Gamma kernel for severities. These mixtures are employed to assess the heterogeneity of risk factors underlying an empirical distribution through the shape of the implied mixing distribution. From the duality of the Negative Binomial and Gamma distributions, we first derive necessary and sufficient conditions for heavy-tailed (i.e., inverse power-law) canonical mixtures. We then formulate flexible 4-parameter families of mixing distributions for Geometric and Exponential kernels to generate heavy-tailed 4-parameter mixture models, and extend these mixtures to arbitrary Negative Binomial and Gamma kernels, respectively, yielding 5-parameter mixtures for detecting and measuring risk heterogeneity. To check the robustness of such heterogeneity inferences, we show how a fitted 5-parameter model may be re-expressed in terms of alternative Negative Binomial or Gamma kernels whose associated mixing distributions form a "calibrated" family.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2505_04795
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Assessing Risk Heterogeneity through Heavy-Tailed Frequency and Severity Mixtures
Powers, Michael R.
Xu, Jiaxin
Methodology
Probability
Applications
60E05, 60E10
The analysis of risk typically involves dividing a random damage-generation process into separate frequency (event-count) and severity (damage-magnitude) components. In the present article, we construct canonical families of mixture distributions for each of these components, based on a Negative Binomial kernel for frequencies and a Gamma kernel for severities. These mixtures are employed to assess the heterogeneity of risk factors underlying an empirical distribution through the shape of the implied mixing distribution. From the duality of the Negative Binomial and Gamma distributions, we first derive necessary and sufficient conditions for heavy-tailed (i.e., inverse power-law) canonical mixtures. We then formulate flexible 4-parameter families of mixing distributions for Geometric and Exponential kernels to generate heavy-tailed 4-parameter mixture models, and extend these mixtures to arbitrary Negative Binomial and Gamma kernels, respectively, yielding 5-parameter mixtures for detecting and measuring risk heterogeneity. To check the robustness of such heterogeneity inferences, we show how a fitted 5-parameter model may be re-expressed in terms of alternative Negative Binomial or Gamma kernels whose associated mixing distributions form a "calibrated" family.
title Assessing Risk Heterogeneity through Heavy-Tailed Frequency and Severity Mixtures
topic Methodology
Probability
Applications
60E05, 60E10
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2505.04795