Nonparametric estimate of spectral density functions of sample covariance matrices: A first step

The density function of the limiting spectral distribution of general sample covariance matrices is usually unknown. We propose to use kernel estimators which are proved to be consistent. A simulation study is also conducted to show the performance of the estimators.
Comment: Published in at http://dx.doi.org/10.1214/10-AOS833 the Annals of Statistics (http://www.imstat.org/aos/) by the Institute of Mathematical Statistics (http://www.imstat.org)