Wasserstein-p Bounds in the Central Limit Theorem Under Weak Dependence

Abstract

The central limit theorem is one of the most fundamental results in probability and has been successfully extended to locally dependent data and strongly-mixing random fields. In this paper, we establish its rate of convergence for transport distances, namely for arbitrary $p\ge 1$ we obtain an upper bound for the Wasserstein-$p$ distance for locally dependent random variables and strongly mixing stationary random fields. Our proofs adapt the Stein dependency neighborhood method to the Wasserstein-$p$ distance and as a by-product we establish high-order local expansions of the Stein equation for dependent random variables. Finally, we demonstrate how our results can be used to obtain tail bounds that are asymptotically tight, and decrease polynomially fast, for the empirical average of weakly dependent random variables.

Withdrawn by authors due to gaps identified in the proofs. The sections concerning mixing random fields had been corrected and superseded by arXiv:2309.07031