On Pickands coordinates in arbitrary dimensions

Pickands coordinates were introduced as a crucial tool for the investigation of bivariate extreme value models. We extend their definition to arbitrary dimensions and, thus, we can generalize many known results for bivariate extreme value and generalized Pareto models to higher dimensions and arbitrary extreme value margins. In particular we characterize multivariate generalized Pareto distributions (GPs) and spectral delta-neighborhoods of GPs in terms of best attainable rates of convergence of extremes, which are well-known results in the univariate case. A sufficient univariate condition for a multivariate distribution function (df) to belong to the domain of attraction of an extreme value df is derived. Bounds for the variational distance in peaks-over-threshold models are established, which are based on Pickands coordinates. (C) 2003 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.