Being the limits of copulas of componentwise maxima in independent random samples, extreme-value copulas can be considered to provide appropriate models for the dependence structure between rare events. Extreme-value copulas not only arise naturally in the domain of extreme-value theory, they can also be a convenient choice to model general positive dependence structures. The aim of this survey is to present the reader with the state-of-the-art in dependence modeling via extreme-value copulas. Both probabilistic and statistical issues are reviewed, in a nonparametric as well as a parametric context.

Extreme-value copulas arise in the asymptotic theory for componentwise maxima of independent random samples. An extreme-value copula is determined by its Pickands dependence function, which is a function on the unit simplex subject to certain shape constraints that arise from an integral transform of an underlying measure called spectral measure. Multivariate extensions are provided of certain rank-based nonparametric estimators of the Pickands dependence function. The shape constraint that the estimator should itself be a Pickands dependence function is enforced by replacing an initial estimator by its best least-squares approximation in the set of Pickands dependence functions having a discrete spectral measure supported on a sufficiently fine grid. Weak convergence of the standardized estimators is demonstrated and the finite-sample performance of the estimators is investigated by means of a simulation experiment.

a b s t r a c tInference on an extreme-value copula usually proceeds via its Pickands dependence function, which is a convex function on the unit simplex satisfying certain inequality constraints. In the setting of an i.i.d. random sample from a multivariate distribution with known margins and an unknown extreme-value copula, an extension of the Capéraà-Fougères-Genest estimator was introduced by D. Zhang, M. T. Wells and L. Peng [Nonparametric estimation of the dependence function for a multivariate extreme-value distribution, Journal of Multivariate Analysis 99 (4) (2008) 577-588]. The joint asymptotic distribution of the estimator as a random function on the simplex was not provided. Moreover, implementation of the estimator requires the choice of a number of weight functions on the simplex, the issue of their optimal selection being left unresolved.A new, simplified representation of the CFG-estimator combined with standard empirical process theory provides the means to uncover its asymptotic distribution in the space of continuous, real-valued functions on the simplex. Moreover, the ordinary leastsquares estimator of the intercept in a certain linear regression model provides an adaptive version of the CFG-estimator whose asymptotic behavior is the same as if the varianceminimizing weight functions were used. As illustrated in a simulation study, the gain in efficiency can be quite sizable.

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