Estimation of Covariate Distribution with Capture–Recapture Data

Abstract

The main purpose of this article is to estimate the underlying covariate distribution with a biased capture–recapture sample. Two procedures are proposed, and the derived estimates are found to be consistent and asymptotically normal. The proposed methods are compared and are shown to perform well in most circumstances via simulation study, and are applied to a real example.

Keywords:

• Conditional likelihood
• Covariate distribution
• Sampling bias

Mathematics Subject Classification:

• 62D05
• 62F10

Acknowledgments

This work is supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (10731010) and RFDP. The authors are grateful to the referees for valuable suggestions.