Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/286841 
Year of Publication: 
2021
Citation: 
[Journal:] Statistical Papers [ISSN:] 1613-9798 [Volume:] 63 [Issue:] 1 [Publisher:] Springer [Place:] Berlin, Heidelberg [Year:] 2021 [Pages:] 181-195
Publisher: 
Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg
Abstract: 
Consider two independent random walks. By chance, there will be spells of association between them where the two processes move in the same direction, or in opposite direction. We compute the probabilities of the length of the longest spell of such random association for a given sample size, and discuss measures like mean and mode of the exact distributions. We observe that long spells (relative to small sample sizes) of random association occur frequently, which explains why nonsense correlation between short independent random walks is the rule rather than the exception. The exact figures are compared with approximations. Our finite sample analysis as well as the approximations rely on two older results popularized by Révész (Stat Pap 31:95–101, 1990, Statistical Papers). Moreover, we consider spells of association between correlated random walks. Approximate probabilities are compared with finite sample Monte Carlo results.
Subjects: 
Coin tossing
Concordance
Discordance
Maximum length of association
JEL: 
G50
H20
Persistent Identifier of the first edition: 
Creative Commons License: 
cc-by Logo
Document Type: 
Article
Document Version: 
Published Version

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