ASYMPTOTIC PROPERTIES OF AN OPTIMAL ESTIMATING FUNCTION APPROACH TO THE ANALYSIS OF MARK RECAPTURE DATA

ABSTRACT

A drawback of non parametric estimators of the size of a closed population in the presence of heterogeneous capture probabilities has been their lack of analytic tractability. Here we show that the martingale estimating function/sample coverage approach to estimating the size of a closed population with heterogeneous capture probabilities is mathematically tractable and develop its large sample properties.

Keywords:

• Heterogeneous capture probabilities
• Capture–recapture experiment
• Sample coverage

ACKNOWLEDGMENT

This work was initiated while the first author was visiting the Institute of Statistics at the National Tsing Hua University. The authors are grateful to an anonymous referee whose comments greatly improved the presentation of the results.