Stein type confidence interval of the disturbance variance in a linear regression model with multivariate student-t distributed errors

This paper considers the interval estimation of the disturbance variance in a linear regression model with multivariate Student-t errors. The distribution function of the Stein type estimator under multivariate Student-t errors is derived, and the coverage probability of the Stein type confidence interval which is constructed under the normality assumption is numerically calculated under the multivariate Student-t distribution. It is shown that the coverage probability of the Stein type confidence interval is sometimes much smaller than the nominal level, and that it is larger than that of the usual confidence interval in almost all cases. For the case when it is known that errors have a multivariate Student-t distribution, sufficient conditions under which the Stein type confidence interval improves on the usual confidence interval are given, and the coverage probability of the Stein type confidence interval is numerically evaluated.