Asymptotics of randomly stopped sums in the presence of heavy tails

Abstract

We study conditions under which $P(S_τ>x)\sim P(M_τ>x)\sim EτP(ξ_1>x)$ as $x\to\infty$, where $S_τ$ is a sum $ξ_1+...+ξ_τ$ of random size $τ$ and $M_τ$ is a maximum of partial sums $M_τ=\max_{n\leτ}S_n$. Here $ξ_n$, $n=1$, 2, ..., are independent identically distributed random variables whose common distribution is assumed to be subexponential. We consider mostly the case where $τ$ is independent of the summands; also, in a particular situation, we deal with a stopping time. Also we consider the case where $Eξ>0$ and where the tail of $τ$ is comparable with or heavier than that of $ξ$, and obtain the asymptotics $P(S_τ>x) \sim EτP(ξ_1>x)+P(τ>x/Eξ)$ as $x\to\infty$. This case is of a primary interest in the branching processes. In addition, we obtain new uniform (in all $x$ and $n$) upper bounds for the ratio $P(S_n>x)/P(ξ_1>x)$ which substantially improve Kesten's bound in the subclass ${\mathcal S}^*$ of subexponential distributions.

22 pages