Estimation in the presence of incidental parameters

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Abstract
This paper considers the estimation of “structural” parameters when the number of unknown parameters increases with the sample size. Neyman and Scott (1948) had demonstrated that maximum likelihood estimators (MLE) of structural parameters may be inconsistent in this case. Patefield (1977) further observed that the asymptotic covariance matrix of the MLE is not equal to the inverse of the information matrix. In this paper we establish asymptotic properties of estimators (which include in particular the MLE) obtained via the usual likelihood approach when the incidental parameters are first replaced by their estimates (which are allowed to depend on the structural parameters). Conditions for consistency and asymptotic normality together with a proper formula for the asymptotic covariance matrix are given. The results are illustrated and applied to the problem of estimating linear functional relationships, and mild conditions on the incidental parameters for the MLE (or an adjusted MLE) to be consistent and asymptotically normal are obtained. These conditions are weaker than those imposed by previous authors.

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