Solved – Is the variance of the multivariate folded normal distribution known

folded-normal-distributionprobabilityvariance

The mean and variance of the folded normal distribution are known. Consider now the distribution of $(|x_1|, \ldots, |x_n|)$, where $\mathbb{x} \sim N(\mu, \Sigma)$. The mean of the multivariate folded normal distribution is easy to obtain. But what about the variance? I could not find references, and the calculation seems complicated. Any suggestion?

Best Answer

There is a section entitled 'Bivariate Half-normal distribution in: Continuous Multivariate Distributions: Models and applications By Samuel Kotz, Norman Lloyd Johnson, N. Balakrishnan.

I would be curious to see how this can be generalized to a random vector of any dimensions.

In fact, the bivariate case appears to be thoroughly treated in this paper: http://www.stat-athens.aueb.gr/~jpan/papers/Panaretos-ApplStatScience2001(119-136)ft.pdf