On the number of empty boxes in the Bernoulli sieve

Abstract

The Bernoulli sieve is the infinite "balls-in-boxes" occupancy scheme with random frequencies $P_k=W_1...W_{k-1}(1-W_k)$, where $(W_k)_{k\in\mn}$ are independent copies of a random variable $W$ taking values in $(0,1)$. Assuming that the number of balls equals $n$, let $L_n$ denote the number of empty boxes within the occupancy range. The paper proves that, under a regular variation assumption, $L_n$, properly normalized without centering, weakly converges to a functional of an inverse stable subordinator. Proofs rely upon the observation that $(\log P_k)$ is a perturbed random walk. In particular, some results for general perturbed random walks are derived. The other result of the paper states that whenever $L_n$ weakly converges (without normalization) the limiting law is mixed Poisson.

Minor corrections to Proposition 5.1 were added

References in corpus (1)

• Small parts in the Bernoulli sieve