For testing normality we investigate the power of several tests, first of all, the well known test of Jarque and Bera (1980) and furthermore the tests of Kuiper (1960) and Shapiro and Wilk (1965) as well as tests of Kolmogorov-Smirnov and Cramér-von Mises type. The tests on normality are based, first, on independent random variables (model I) and, second, on the residuals in the classical linear regression (model II). We investigate the exact critical values of the Jarque-Bera test and the Kolmogorov-Smirnov and Cramér-von Mises tests, in the latter case for the original and standardized observations where the unknown parameters µ and σ have to be estimated. The power comparison is carried out via Monte Carlo simulation assuming the model of contaminated normal distributions with varying parameters µ and σ and different proportions of contamination. It turns out that for the JarqueBera test the approximation of critical values by the chi-square distribution does not work very well. The test is superior in power to its competitors for symmetric distributions with medium up to long tails and for slightly skewed distributions with long tails. The power of the Jarque-Bera test is poor for distributions with short tails, especially if the shape is bimodal, sometimes the test is even biased. In this case a modification of the Cramér-von Mises test or the Shapiro-Wilk test may be recommended.

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For the c -sample location problem with equal and unequal variances, we compare the classical F -test and its robustified version-the Welch test-with some nonparametric counterparts defined for two-sided and one-sided ordered alternatives, such as trend and umbrella alternatives. A new rank test for long-tailed distributions is proposed. The comparison is referred to level alpha and power beta of the tests, and is carried out via Monte Carlo simulation, assuming short-, medium- and long-tailed as well as asymmetric distributions. It turns out that the Welch test is the best one in the case of unequal variances but in the case of equal variances special non-parametric tests are to prefer.

For the two-sample problem with location and/or scale alternatives, as well as different shapes, several statistical tests are presented, such as of Kolmogorov-Smirnov and Cramér-von Mises type for the general alternative, and such as of Lepage type for location and scale alternatives. We compare these tests with the t-test and other location tests, such as the Welch test, and also the Levene test for scale. It turns out that there is, of course, no clear winner among the tests but, for symmetric distributions with the same shape, tests of Lepage type are the best ones whereas, for different shapes, Cramér-von Mises type tests are preferred. For extremely right-skewed distributions, a modification of the Kolmogorov-Smirnov test should be applied.

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