Hypotheses testing and posterior concentration rates for semi-Markov processes

Abstract: In this paper, we adopt a nonparametric Bayesian approach and investigate the asymptotic behavior of the posterior distribution in continuous time and general state space semi-Markov processes. In particular, we obtain posterior concentration rates for semi-Markov kernels. For the purposes of this study, we construct robust statistical tests between Hellinger balls around semi-Markov kernels and present some specifications to particular cases, including discrete-time semi-Markov processes and finite state space Markov processes. The objective of this paper is to provide sufficient conditions on priors and semi-Markov kernels that enable us to establish posterior concentration rates.