Purpose

In this work the author gathers several methods and techniques to construct systematically Stieltjes classes for densities defined on R+.

Design/methodology/approach

The author uses complex integration to obtain integrable functions with vanishing moments sequence, and then the author considers some operators defined on the vanishing moments subspace.

Findings

The author gather several methods and techniques to construct systematically Stieltjes classes for densities defined on R+⁠. The author constructs explicitly Stieltjes classes with center at well-known probability densities. The author gives a lot of examples, including old cases and new ones.

Originality/value

The author computes the Hilbert transform of powers of |ln⁡x| to construct Stieltjes classes by using a recent result connecting the Krein condition and the Hilbert transform.

Consider the subspace M of all functions f∈L1(R+) with finite moment sequence, i.e.

The vanishing moments subspace M0 is given as follows

We also consider the subspace M¯ of all functions f∈L1(R+) with strong finite moment sequence, i.e.

and the corresponding strong vanishing moments subspace M¯0⁠.

First, we introduce a method to get functions in M0 or M¯0⁠: assume that g is an analytic function on a region containing the sector

We use complex integration to show that

(1)

provided that g satisfies suitable conditions on the boundary ∂Sα of Sα. As usual, Rz,Iz denote the real and imaginary parts of z∈C⁠.

Then we introduce some operators mapping the subspace M0 into itself. For instance, we prove that M0 is invariant under the operator

provided that μ is a positive bounded measure on (R+,B+) with finite moments sequence, see (18). Here μ * g is the convolution of the measure μ and the function g on R+ given by

Suppose now that f is a probability density function (we use further just density) of a random variable X such that all moments are finite, i.e., mk≔E[Xk]=∫0∞xkf(x)dx<∞ for all k∈N0⁠, hence m0 = 1. This means that f∈M⁠. It is well-known that the moment sequence {mk}k=1∞ either determines X and f uniquely, and we say that X, and also f, is M-determinate, or that f is M-indeterminate. In the latter case there are infinitely many continuous and infinitely many discrete distributions all sharing the same moments as X ∼ f. This is a fundamental qualitative result, see [1, 2].

In the survey [3] the author revisited recent developments on the checkable moment-(in)determinacy criteria including Cramér's condition, Carleman's condition, Hardy's condition, Krein's condition and the growth rate of moments. In this survey the author analyzes Hamburger and Stieltjes cases.

In this work we only focus in the Stieltjes case, i.e we consider distributions supported on R+⁠. Recall that in [4] was introduced the concept of Stieltjes class for M-indeterminate absolutely continuous distribution function. Let f be a density in M⁠. Assume that there exists a function h∈L∞(R+) such that ‖h‖∞ = 1, fh∈M0 and fh is not identically zero. Then the Stieltjes class S(f, h) with center at f and perturbation h is given by

Clearly, S(f, h) is a family of densities all having the same moment sequence as f.

If X ∼ f is M-determinate, then the perturbation h = 0, and the Stieltjes class consists of a single element, the center f.

The main aim of this work is to find perturbations for Stieltjes classes with center at a density f > 0. To do this, the basic idea is take a function g∈M0 such that h = g/f is bounded on R+⁠, therefore h will be a perturbation (up to scaling by a constant) for a Stieltjes class with center at f. Thus, in this paper all the densities f are M-indeterminate.

When X ∼ f with a density f in M¯⁠, we make the obvious changes to define the strong Stieltjes class with center at f.

In [5, Theorem 1.2] the author proved that if f is a density in M satisfying the Krein condition

(2)

then S(f,sin(He⁡ln⁡f)) is a Stieltjes class, where He⁡ln⁡f is the Hilbert transform of u = ln f:

(3)

In particular, here we compute He(|ln⁡x|m)⁠, m∈N⁠, to obtain new Stieltjes classes corresponding to M-indeterminate generalized log-normal random variables.

In order to test our approach we apply the developed methods to the generalized gamma (GG) distribution (see Examples 4, 8, 11 and 12), powers of the generalized inverse gaussian (GIG) distribution (see Examples 3, 14 and 16), powers of the half-logistic distribution (see Example 7) and to the generalized lognormal (GLN) distribution (see Examples 5, 6, 19 and 21).

This work is organized as follows. In Section 2 we give the precise conditions on g to prove (1), and we apply this result to get functions in M0⁠. In Section 3 we introduce some operators defined on M0 and we use the functions obtained in Section 2 to get new perturbations in Examples 5, 6, 8, 11, 19 and 21, hence we give new Stieltjes classes. In the last section we compute He(|ln⁡x|m)⁠, m∈N={1,2,…}⁠.

In this section we use complex integration to obtain functions in M0 or M¯0⁠. We follow the technique introduced in [6], also in [7], where a similar result appears. In fact, in [6] the author asks the condition g(x) ≥ A exp(−axα) for some A > 0, a > 0 and some α ∈ (0, 1/2), which is replaced with our integrability conditions (4), (5) and (6) below.

Let S⊂C⁠, then hol(S) denotes the space of analytic functions on a region containing S.

Lemma 1.

Let 0 < α < 1, γ∈C. Suppose that g ∈ hol(Sα) satisfies the following conditions

(4)
(5)
(6)

Then

(7)
Proof.

We pick 0 < ɛ < A < ∞, Cauchy's theorem implies that

where the contour Cɛ,A consists of the real axis from ɛ to A, the arc of the circle z = Aeit from t = 0 to t = πα, the straight line from Aeiπα to ɛeiπα and the arc of the circle z = ɛei(πα−t) from t = 0 to t = πα. Thus,

Since |zλ|=|z|Rλ⁡exp(−arg  zIλ) for all λ∈C⁠, z∈C*⁠, conditions (5) and (6) imply that limA→∞I2=limε→0+I4=0⁠. Therefore from condition (4) we get

□

and the result follows.

Theorem 2.

Let 0 < α < 1. Suppose that g ∈ hol(Sα) satisfies conditions (5), (6) with γ = (n + 1)/α, g(x)∈R for all x > 0 and

(8)
then relation(1)holds.
Proof.

By setting γ = (n + 1)/α for all n∈N0 or n∈Z⁠, t = xα, t−1dt = αx−1dx in (7) and taking the imaginary part, the result follows.□

We recall an inequality that will be useful to get our estimates: since ex ≥ x for all x > 0 we have

(9)

Throughout this work the constant K will be a normalizing constant to produce a density function in each case.

Example 3.

For all b1, b2 > 0, 0 < c1, c2 < 1/2 and a∈R we have

(10)

Indeed, we just apply Theorem 2 with g(z) = zβ  exp(−ρ1zλ − ρ2z−1) for any β∈R⁠, λ, ρ1, ρ2 > 0. Clearly g is an analytic function on {z∈C*:|argz|<π}⁠.

From (9) we have that g satisfies condition (8) for all 0 < α < 1, n∈Z⁠. Assume that 0 < α, αλ < 1/2, then the inequalities

(11)

together the inequality in (9) imply that

and, by making A = 1/ɛ, the last case implies

From Theorem 2 we have

and the result follows by setting α = c2, λ = c1/c2, β = (a − 1)/c2, ρi = bi/cos(πci), i = 1, 2. Thus h(x)=sinπa+b2⁡tan(πc2)x−c2−b1⁡tan(πc1)xc1 is a perturbation for the strong Stieltjes class with center at f(x)=Kxa−1⁡exp(−b1xc1−b2x−c2)⁠, x > 0. This Stieltjes class was also founded in [6].

Example 4.

For all 0 < α < 1/2, a, b > 0 we have

(12)

Indeed, consider g(z) = zβ  exp(−ρz) for any β > − 1/α, ρ > 0. From (9) we have that g satisfies condition (8) for all n∈N0⁠. The inequality in (11) implies condition (5) holds for all μ = (n + 1)/α, n∈N0⁠. Since

Theorem 2 implies that

and the result follows by setting β = (a − 1)/α and ρ = b/cos(πα). Thus h(x) = sin(πa − b tan(πα)xα) is a perturbation for the Stieltjes class with center at f(x) = Kxa−1  exp(−bxα), x > 0. This Stieltjes class was also founded in [7, Example 3.2].

Recall that ⌊⋅⌋ is the floor function and ⌈⋅⌉ is the ceiling function. For x,y∈R⁠, m∈N⁠, we have

(13)
Example 5.

For all 0 < α < 1/2, b > 0, m∈N, we have

where
(14)

To see this, consider g(z) = exp(−ρz(Log z)m) for any ρ > 0, here Log z stands for the principal branch of the logarithm function. For n∈N0 we write

Clearly I2 < ∞, and (9) implies that

Clearly I1 < ∞ when m is even. Assume that m is odd, thus

Hence g satisfies condition (8) for all n∈N0⁠, m∈N⁠.

Since the real part is an additive function, we have for A > e and t ∈ [0, πα] that

(15)

for some constant C > 0. Therefore,

for all n∈N0⁠.

On the other hand, there is C > 0 such that −Reit(ln⁡ε+it)m≤C(|ln⁡ε|m+1) for all t ∈ [0, πα], thus

Theorem 2 implies that

the result follows by setting ρ = b/αm and using (13). As before, we can consider the corresponding Stieltjes class for the density

Example 6.

For all a∈R, b > 0, m∈N, we have

Consider g(z) = zβ  exp(−ρ(Log z)2m) for any β∈R⁠, ρ > 0. We make the change of variable y = ln x to get

As in (15) and using (13) we can see that

for all n∈Z⁠. The function g also satisfies condition (6) for μ = (n + 1)/α, n∈Z⁠, we just set A = 1/ɛ and apply the last case.

Theorem 2 implies that

and the result follows by setting ρ = b/α2m, β = a/α and using (13). Thus h(x) = sin(πa − bψ2m(x)) is a perturbation for the strong Stieltjes class with center at f(x)=Kxae−bθ2m(x)⁠.

Example 7.

For all a > 0, 0 < α < 1/2 we have

whereθ(x) = xα  cos(πα), ψ(x) = xα  sin(πα).

Consider g(z)=zβ(1+e−z)−2e−z for arbitrary β > − 1/α. For all n∈N0 we have that

When Rz>0 we have that |1+e−z|≥1−e−Rz⁠, therefore

For 0 < ɛ < 1 we have

Hence

Theorem 2 implies that

and the result follows by setting β = (a − 1)/α.

Notice that

is a bounded continuous function on R+⁠, and it can be used to construct a Stieltjes class with center at f̃(x)=Kxa−1(1+e−θ(x))−2e−θ(x)⁠. Now we set δ = (cos(πα))−1/α, and a change of variable implies that h(x)=h̃(δx) can be used to get a Stieltjes class with center at

For 0 < α < 1/2 the last densities are the densities of M-indeterminate powers of random variables following a half-logistic distribution, see [8, Section 6].

For m∈N⁠, s > 0 we introduce the operator Tm,s as follows

The binomial formula implies that Tm,sM0⊂M0⁠:

(16)

The case m = 1 was considered in [8, Lemma 1].

For a, b > 0 and 0 < α < 1 we have

(17)
Example 8.

Let m∈N,s>0,0<α<1/2 fixed. From (12) we have

thus(17)implies that
is a bounded continuous function onR+that can be used to obtain a Stieltjess class with center at f(x) = Kx1/m−1  exp(−xα/m),x > 0.

If g1,…gm∈M0 and a1,…am∈R then ∑iaigi∈M0⁠, hence the following result is a generalization of the last observation.

Proposition 9.

Let (J, μ) be a measure space. Assume that G:R+×J→R is a measurable function such that xnG(x,ω)∈L1(R+×J,dx⊗dμ) for all n∈N0 or n∈Z and

therefore ∫ΩG(⋅,ω)dμ(ω)∈M0or M¯0⁠.
Proof.

Fubini's theorem implies that

□
Corollary 10.

Let μ be a positive bounded measure on (R+,B+) such that

(18)
Ifg∈M0⁠, thenμ*g∈M0⁠.
Proof.

We consider the function G:R+×R+→R given by

Clearly G is a measurable function and satisfies

for all n∈N0⁠. Since g∈M0 we have that G(⋅,s)∈M0 for all s > 0, and the last result implies that ∫0∞G(⋅,s)ds∈M0⁠. On the other hand, we have

We apply the last result to obtain new Stieltjes classes with center at f(x) = K exp(−xα), x > 0, as follows.

Example 11.

By (12) we have g(x)=sin(tan(πα)xα)exp(−xα)∈M0, with 0 < α < 1/2 fixed. Consider the measures dμ1(s) = χ(0,1)ds and dμ2(s) = e−sds on R+. Thus,

wherex ∧ 1 = min{x, 1} and

From (17) we get

hence the bounded function h(x) = μ1 * g(x) exp(xα) can be used to construct a Stieltjes class with center at f(x) = K exp(−xα), x > 0.

Since (x/e)α ≤ x/e for all x ≥ e, there exist a constant 0 < C < 1 such that xα − x ≤ −Cx for all x ≥ e, thus

and we proceed as before to construct the corresponding Stieltjes class.

Now, let p be a polynomial with real coefficients, with p(0) = 0 and p′ > 0 on R+⁠. We introduce the operator Rp as follows

where p−1 is the inverse function of p on R+⁠. As in (16), a change of variable and the binomial formula implies that RpM0⊂M0⁠.

Example 12.

Let 0 < α < 1/2, a, b > 0 be fixed and 1 ≤ n < (2α)−1, n∈N. From (12) we have that g(x)=xna−1⁡sin(πna−b⁡tan(nπα)xnα)exp(−bxnα)∈M0. We set pn (x) = xn, x ≥ 0, to get that

thereforehn(x) = sin(πna − b tan(nπα)xα),x > 0, is a perturbation for a Stieltjes class with center atf(x) = Kxa−1  exp(−bxα),x > 0. As far as we know, these are new Stieltjes classes when 2 ≤ n < (2α)−1,n∈N.
Remark 13.

Let Λ ≠ ∅. Assume that {fλ}λ∈Λ⊂M0. If x−1fλ0(x−1)∈{fλ}λ∈Λ, then fλ0∈M¯0.

Example 14.

Let 0 < c1, c2 < 1/2, b1, b2 > 0, a∈R be fixed and 1≤n<2−1(c1−1∧c2−1), n∈N. From (10) we have that

we proceed as in Example 12 and use Remark 13 to get that

Once again, we obtain new perturbations for strong Stieltjes classes with center at f(x)=Kxa−1⁡exp(−b1xc1−b2x−c2), x > 0.

In this section we use a different technique to construct Stieltjes classes. This method involves the computation of the Hilbert transform of ln f, where f is a density f∈M satisfying the Krein criterion (2). In [5, Theorem 1.2] was proved that S(f,sin(He⁡ln⁡f)) is a Stieltjes class with center at f, where the Hilbert transform He is defined in (3). The following result can be found in [5, Remark 2.1, Lemmas 2.2 and 2.3] and provides the computation of the Hilbert transform of power functions, constant functions and the logarithm function.

Proposition 15.

a) For any constant c∈R we have He(c)≡0.

b) Let 0 < |γ| < 1. Then

c) He(ln⁡x)≡−π⁠.

As a consequence we obtain a Stieltjes class with center at a generalized inverse Gaussian density.

Example 16.

Let a∈R, b1, b2 > 0, 0 < c1, c2 < 1/2. Consider the density f(x)=Kxa−1⁡exp(−b1xc1−b2x−c2), x > 0. Proposition 15 implies that

Thus h(x)=sinπa+b2⁡tan(πc2)x−c2−b1⁡tan(πc1)xc1, x > 0, is a perturbation for the Stieltjes class with center at f. This is the case n = 1 in Example 14.

Remark 17.

As before, we can see that h(x) = sin(πa − b tan(πα)xα), x > 0, is a perturbation for the Stieltjes class with center at the density f(x) = Kxa−1  exp(−bxα), x > 0, provided that 0 < α < 1/2, a, b > 0. This is the case n = 1 in Example 12.

Finally, in the last examples we get two Stieltjes classes that we could not obtain by the method of complex integration given in Section 2. The densities involved are special cases of generalized log-normal densities, see [9]. In order to construct these examples we need to find out the Hilbert transform of | ln x|n, x > 0, n∈N⁠. Thus, we need to compute the principal value of the singular integral in (3) with u = | ln x|n, n∈N⁠.

For all k,n∈N0 we have the identity, see [10, p. 69, eq. 4.1.51],

(19)

We introduce the following constants

where ζ(z) is the zeta function.

First we compute the Hilbert transform of even powers of | ln x|.

Lemma 18.

For m∈N we have

(20)
Proof.

By (3) it follows that

Let t > 0 fixed and ɛ > 0 small enough. Since the geometric series with ratio r = x2/t2 converges uniformly for x ∈ [0, t −ɛ], and by using (19), we get that

Multiplying the last equality by t and using that arctanh(x)=∑n=0∞x2n+1/(2n+1) for |x| < 1, we have

(21)

Similarly, we can obtain that

As before, we multiply the last equality by t to get

(22)

By the other hand,

and we apply the Weierstrass M-test to the third terms in (21) and (22), considering ɛ ∈ [0, ɛ0) with ɛ0 small enough, to obtain

Finally, we use that arctanh(x)=2−1⁡ln1+x1−x⁠, |x| < 1, to obtain

L'Hôpital's rule implies that the last limit is equal to zero, and the result follows.□

Similar to (9), now we give a basic estimate for the logarithm function: since xs ≤ exp(xs) for all x, s > 0, we have

(23)
Example 19.

For m∈N consider the density f(x) = K exp(−| ln x|2m), x > 0. Clearly

for alln ∈ Z, thenf∈M¯. From(23)we get
thusfsatisfies(2), thereforesin(He(|ln⁡x|2m)(t))is a perturbation for the Stieltjes class with center atf, whereHe(|ln⁡x|2m)is given in(20).

Finally, we compute the Hilbert transform of odd powers of | ln x|. The computations are very similar to those in the proof of Lemma 18.

Lemma 20.

For m∈N we have

(24)

For t > 1 we have He(|ln⁡x|2m−1)(t)=He(|ln⁡x|2m−1)(t−1).

Proof.

We just make a sketch of the proof. Let t ∈ (0, 1) fixed. We have the following equalities

Therefore we obtain

The last limit is equal to zero and the result follows. When t > 1 a change of variables shows that He(|ln⁡x|2m−1)(t2)=He(|ln⁡x|2m−1)(t−2)⁠.□

Example 21.

For m∈N consider the density f(x) = K exp(−| ln x|2m−1), x > 0. Then sin(He(|ln⁡x|2m−1)(t)) is a perturbation for the Stieltjes class with center at f, where He(|ln⁡x|2m−1) is given in (24).

In this setting, we also can use the functions in M0 obtained in Examples 5 and 6 to construct perturbations for Stieltjes classes with center at generalized log-normal densities.

We gather several methods and techniques to construct systematically Stieltjes classes for M-indeterminate probability densities defined on R+⁠. We construct explicitly Stieltjes classes with centers at densities of M-indeterminate powers of generalized log-normal random variables.

Funding: This research received no specific grant from any funding agency.

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