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While Nadarajah (2005) may have used the term 'generalised Normal' to describe a density that nests this form, there are more suitable names that extend far further back in time, and which accordingly seem much more appropriate.

In particular, I believe this should properly referred to as a Subbotin distribution (Subbotin 1923). Other later references include:

  • Diananda (1949)

  • Turner (1960)

  • Zeckhauser and Thompson (1970)

  • McDonald and Newey (1988)

  • Mineo and Ruggieri (2005)

The functional form given by Subbotin (1923) defines the pdf as:

$$f(x) = \frac{\alpha }{2 b \Gamma \left(\frac{1}{\alpha }\right)}\text{exp}\left[-\left|\frac{x}{b}\right|^{\alpha }\right]$$

Subbotin used parameter $b = 1/h$, but the functional form is otherwise identical to that given here. Here is a plot of the pdf with $b=2$, as parameter $\alpha$ varies:

http://www.tri.org.au/se/Subbotinpdfplot.png

In this form: $$Var(X) = \frac{b^2 \Gamma \left(\frac{3}{\alpha}\right)}{\Gamma \left(\frac{1}{\alpha}\right)}$$

Other names include: Box-Tiao distribution (McDonald and Newey 1988), and Power-Exponential (McDonald and Newey 1988, Johnson et al. 1995). Finally, it is worth noting that some economic papers inappropriately ascribe the name 'Subbotin distribution' to an Exponential-Power distribution that has a different functional form.

wolfies
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