Characterizing Exponential Family Distributions by Moment Generating Functions
Open Access
- 1 May 1975
- journal article
- Published by Institute of Mathematical Statistics in The Annals of Statistics
- Vol. 3 (3) , 747-753
- https://doi.org/10.1214/aos/1176343140
Abstract
It is shown that if $\mathbf{T}$ has an unknown exponential family distribution with natural parameter $\mathbf{\theta}$, then $\mathbf{G(\theta)} = \mathbf{ET}$ uniquely specifies the moment generating function. The converse is proved, namely, if $\{\mathbf{T_\theta}\}$ is a family of random variables with moment generating functions of a certain form, then it must be an exponential family. Moreover, several necessary and sufficient conditions are given so that a function can be the mean value function of an exponential family distribution.
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