Semiparametric Estimation of Optimal Dividend Barrier for Spectrally Negative Lévy Process

We discuss a statistical estimation problem of an optimal dividend barrier when the surplus process follows a Lévy insurance risk process. The optimal dividend barrier is defined as the level of the barrier that maximizes the expectation of the present value of all dividend payments until ruin. In this paper, an estimator of the expected present value of all dividend payments is defined based on “quasi-process” in which sample paths are generated by shuffling increments of a sample path of the Lévy insurance risk process. The consistency of the optimal dividend barrier estimator is shown. Moreover, our approach is examined numerically in the case of the compound Poisson risk model perturbed by diffusion.