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George Lowther
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You cannot identify a Lévy process by the distribution of its increments, except in the trivial case of a deterministic process Xt − X0 = bt with constant b. In fact, you can't identify it by the n-dimensional marginals for any n.

  1. Let X be a nondeterministic Lévy process with X0 = 0 and n be any positive integer. Then, there is a cadlag process Y with a different distribution to X, but such that (Yt1,Yt2,…,Ytn) has the same distribution as (Xt1,Xt2,…,Xtn) for all times t1,t2,…,tn.

Taking n = 2 will give a process whose increments have the same distribution as for X.

The idea (as in my answer to this related question) is to reduce it to the finite dimensional case. So, fix a set of times 0 = t0 < t1 < t2 < … < tm for some m > 1. We can look at the distribution of X conditioned on the ℝm-valued random variable U ≡ (Xt1,Xt2,…,Xtm). By the Markov property, it will consist of a set of independent processes on the intervals [tk−1,tk] and [tm,∞), where the distribution of {Xt }t ∈[tk−1,tk] only depends on (Xtk−1,Xtk) and the distribution of {Xt }t ∈[tm,∞) only depends on Xtm. By the disintegration theorem, the process X can be built by first constructing the random variable U, then constructing X to have the correct probabilities conditional on U. Doing this, the distribution of X at any one time only depends on the values of at most two elements of U (corresponding to Xtk−1,Xtk). The distribution of X at any n times depends on the values of at most 2n values of U.

Choosing m > 2n, the idea is to replace U by a different distributed ℝm random variable for which any 2n elements still have the same distribution as U. The idea is to apply a small bump to the distribution of U in such a way that the m − 1 dimensional marginals are unchanged. To do this, we can use the following.

  1. Let U be an ℝm-valued random variable with probability measure μ. Suppose that there exist finite (and non-trival) measures μ12,…,μm on the reals such that μ1(A12(A2)…μm(Am) ≤ μ(A1×A2×…×Am) for all Borel subsets A1,A2,…,Am ⊆ ℝ. Then, there is an ℝm-valued random variable V with a different distribution to U, but with the same m − 1 dimensional marginal distributions.

By 'non-trivial' I mean that μ*k is a on-zero measure and does not consist of a single atom.

By changing the distribution of U in this way, we construct a new cadlag process with a different distribution to X, but with the same n dimensional marginals.

Proving (2) is easy enough. As μk are non-trivial, there will by measurable functions ƒk on the reals, uniformly bounded by 1 and such that μkk) = 0 and μk(|ƒk|) > 0. Replacing μk by the signed measure ƒkμk, we can assume that μk(ℝ) = 0. Then $$ \mu_V = \mu + \mu_1\times\mu_2\times\cdots\times\mu_n $$ is a probability. Choosing V with this distribution gives $$ {\mathbb E}[f(V)]=\mu_V(f)=\mu(f)={\mathbb E}[f(U)] $$ for any function ƒ: ℝm → ℝ+ independent of one of the dimensions. So, V has the same m − 1 dimensional marginals as U.

To apply (2), to U = (Xt1,Xt2,…,Xtm), consider the following cases.

  1. X is continuous. In this case, X is just a Brownian motion (up to multiplication by a constant and addition of a constant drift). So, U is a joint-normal with nondegenerate covariance matrix. Its probability density is continuous and strictly positive so, in (2), we can take μk to be a multiple of the uniform measure on [0,1].

  2. X is a Poisson process. In this case, we can take μk to be a multiple of the (discrete) uniform distribution on {2k,2k + 1} and, as X can take any increasing nonnegative integer-valued path on the times tk, this satisfies the hypothesis of (2).

  3. If X is any non-continuous Lévy process, case 2 can be used to change the distribution of its jump times without affecting the n dimensional marginals: Let ν be its jump measure, and A be a Borel set such that ν(A) is finite and nonzero. Then, X decomposes as the sum of its jumps in A (which occur according to a Poisson process of rate ν(A)) and an independent Lévy process. In this way, we can reduce to the case where X is a Lévy process whose jumps occur at a finite rate, with arrival times given by a Poisson process. In that case, let Nt be the Poisson process counting the number of jumps in intervals [0,t]. Also, let Zk be the k'th jump of X. Then, N and the Zk are all independent and, $$ X_t=\sum_{k=1}^{N_t}Z_k. $$ As above, the Poisson process N can be replaced by a differently distributed cadlag process which has the same n dimensional marginals. This will not affect the n dimensional distributions of X but, as the jump times of X no longer occur according to a Poisson process, X will no longer be a Lévy process.

George Lowther
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