A Test for Multivariate Normality Focused on Elliptical Symmetry Using Mahalanobis Distances

A chi-squared test of multivariate normality is suggested which is mainly focused on detecting deviations from elliptical symmetry. This test uses Mahalanobis distances of observations to have some power for deviations from multivariate normality. We derive the limiting distribution of the test statistic by a conditional limit theorem. A simulation study is conducted to study the accuracy of the limiting distribution in finite samples. Finally, we compare the power of our method with those of other popular tests of multivariate normality under two non-normal distributions.