A contamination model for approximate stochastic order: extended version

Stochastic ordering among distributions has been considered in a variety of scenarios. Economic studies often involve research about the ordering of investment strategies or social welfare. However, as noted in the literature, stochastic orderings are often a too strong assumption which is not supported by the data even in cases in which the researcher tends to believe that a certain variable is somehow smaller than other. Instead of considering this rigid model of stochastic order we propose to look at a more flexible version in which two distributions are said to satisfy an approximate stochastic order relation if they are slightly contaminated versions of distributions which do satisfy the stochastic ordering. The minimal level of contamination that makes this approximate model hold can be used as a measure of the deviation of the original distributions from the exact stochastic order model. Our approach is based on the use of trimmings of probability measures. We discuss the connection between them and the approximate stochastic order model and provide theoretical support for its use in data analysis. We also provide simulation results.