Maximum correlation for the generalized Sarmanov bivariate distributions

In order to improve the correlation of the traditional Sarmanov distribution, a ‘generalized’ version was introduced earlier by Bairamov et al. (2001). The extent of the improvement in correlation, however, was never investigated in the literature. In this note we compare the two Sarmanov models regarding their maximum correlation. Several examples are given. It is shown that unlike the traditional Sarmanov, the generalized one always has a correlation approaching one regardless of the marginals, as long as the marginals are of the same type. When they are not of the same type, however, the correlation has an upper bound strictly less than one. We find conditions under which the upper bound is attained. Finally, we investigate the rates of convergence to the maximum correlation for the generalized Sarmanov bivariate distributions.