Introduction

Abstract

The study of copulas and their applications in statistics is a rather modern phenomenon. Until quite recently it was difficult to even locate the word “copula” in the statistical literature. There is no entry for “copula” in the nine volume Encyclopedia of Statistical Sciences, nor in the supplement volume. However, the first update volume, published in 1997, does have such an entry [Fisher (1997)]. The first reference in the Current Index to Statistics to a paper using “copula” in the title or as a keyword is in Volume 7 (1981) [the paper is Schweizer and Wolff (1981)]—indeed, in the first eighteen volumes (1975–92) of the Current Index to Statistics there are only eleven references to papers mentioning copulas. There are, however, twenty references in the most recent four volumes (1993–96).