An offspring of multivariate extreme value theory: The max-characteristic function

This paper introduces max-characteristic functions (max-CFs), which are an offspring of multivariate extreme-value theory. A max-CF characterizes the distribution of a random vector in Rd, whose components are nonnegative and have finite expectation. Pointwise convergence of max-CFs is shown to be equivalent to convergence with respect to the Wasserstein metric. The space of max-CFs is not closed in the sense of pointwise convergence. An inversion formula for max-CFs is established.