Compatibility and attainability of matrices of correlation-based measures of concordance
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Necessary and sufficient conditions are derived under which concordance measures arise from correlations of transformed ranks of random variables. Compatibility and attainability of square matrices with entries given by such measures are studied, that is, whether a given square matrix of such measures of association can be realized for some random vector and how such a random vector can be constructed. Special cases of this framework include (matrices of pairwise) Spearman's rho, Blomqvist's beta and van der Waerden's coefficient. For these specific measures, characterizations of sets of compatible matrices are provided. Compatibility and attainability of block matrices and hierarchical matrices are also studied. In particular, a subclass of attainable block Spearman's rho matrices is proposed to compensate for the drawback that Spearman's rho matrices are in general not attainable for dimensions larger than four. Another result concerns a novel analytical form of the Cholesky factor of block matrices which allows one, for example, to construct random vectors with given block matrices of van der Waerden's coefficient.
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