Conjugate Priors for Exponential Families

Abstract

Let $X$ be a random vector distributed according to an exponential family with natural parameter $\theta \in \Theta$. We characterize conjugate prior measures on $\Theta$ through the property of linear posterior expectation of the mean parameter of $X : E\{E(X|\theta)|X = x\} = ax + b$. We also delineate which hyperparameters permit such conjugate priors to be proper.