Product limit estimates: a generalized maximum likelihood study

Abstract

The generalized maximum likelihood estimate (GMLE) assumptions are studied for four product-limit estimates (PLE): Censoring PLE (Kaplan-Meier estimate), truncation PLE, censoring-truncation PLE, and the degenerated PLE - the empirical distribution function. This paper shows that all the PLE's are also the GMLE's even if they are derived from partial likelihoods by natural parameterization techniques. However, a counter example is given to show that Kiefer Wolfowitz's assumption (1956) for consistency of GMLE can hardly be satisfied for un-dominated case.

Keywords:

• censoring
• generalized maximum likelihood estimate
• product-limit estimate
• truncation