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Statistica Sinica 2(1992), 91-111


INTEGRABLE EXPANSIONS FOR POSTERIOR

DISTRIBUTIONS FOR ONE-PARAMETER
EXPONENTIAL FAMILIES


Michael Woodroofe


University of Michigan


Abstract: The main results provide asymptotic expansions for posterior distributions which may be integrated termwise with respect to the marginal distribution of the data. The proof uses a data dependent transformation which converts the likelihood function to exact normality and then applies a version of Stein's Identity to the posterior distributions. Applications to sequential confidence intervals are described briefly.



Key words and phrases: Posterior distributions, parameter transformations, Stein's Identity, martingale convergence theorem, stopping times, sequential confidence intervals.



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