Search

This paper provides general expression for Bartlett and Bartlett-type correction factors for the likelihood ratio and gradient statistics to test the dispersion parameter in heteroscedastic symmetric nonlinear models. This class of regression models is potentially useful for modeling data containing outlying observations. We consider a partition on the dispersion parameter vector in order to test the parameters of interest. Furthermore, we develop Monte Carlo simulations to compare the finite sample performances of the corrected tests proposed with the usual and modified score tests, likelihood and gradient tests, the Bartlett-type corrected score test and bootstrap corrected tests. Our simulation results favor the score and gradient corrected tests as well as the bootstrap tests. An empirical application is presented for illustrative purposes., Comment: 17 pages

The Birnbaum-Saunders distribution, also known as the fatigue-life distribution, is frequently used in reliability studies. We obtain adjustments to the Birnbaum--Saunders profile likelihood function. The modified versions of the likelihood function were obtained for both the shape and scale parameters, i.e., we take the shape parameter to be of interest and the scale parameter to be of nuisance, and then consider the situation in which the interest lies in performing inference on the scale parameter with the shape parameter entering the modeling in nuisance fashion. Modified profile maximum likelihood estimators are obtained by maximizing the corresponding adjusted likelihood functions. We present numerical evidence on the finite sample behavior of the different estimators and associated likelihood ratio tests. The results favor the adjusted estimators and tests we propose. A novel aspect of the profile likelihood adjustments obtained in this paper is that they yield improved point estimators and tests. The two profile likelihood adjustments work well when inference is made on the shape parameter, and one of them displays superior behavior when it comes to performing hypothesis testing inference on the scale parameter. Two empirical applications are briefly presented., Comment: Paper accepted for publication in Computational Statistics and Data Analysis