In this paper we propose James–Stein type estimators for variances raised to a fixed power by shrinking individual variance estimators towards the arithmetic mean. We derive and estimate the optimal choices of shrinkage parameters under both the squared and the Stein loss functions. Asymptotic...

In this paper, we propose a new componentwise estimator of a dispersion matrix, based on a highly robust estimator of scale. The key idea is the elimination of a location estimator in the dispersion estimation procedure. The robustness properties are studied by means of the influence function...

The asymptotic distribution of multivariate M-estimates is studied. It is shown that, in general, consistency leads to asymptotic normality and a Law of the Iterated Logarithm. The results are used to compute via matrix derivatives the asymptotic distribution of a class of estimates due to Maronna.