Published In

Institute of Mathematical Statistics

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

1-1-2008

Subjects

Linear orderings, Competing risks -- Mathematical models, Statistical hypothesis testing -- Asymptotic theory

Abstract

There is a substantial literature on testing for the equality of the cumulative incidence functions associated with one specific cause in a competing risks setting across several populations against specific or all alternatives. In this paper we propose an asymptotically distribution-free test when the alternative is that the incidence functions are linearly ordered, but not equal. The motivation stems from the fact that in many examples such a linear ordering seems reasonable intuitively and is borne out generally from empirical observations. These tests are more powerful when the ordering is justified. We also provide estimators of the incidence functions under this ordering constraint, derive their asymptotic properties for statistical inference purposes, and show improvements over the unrestricted estimators when the order restriction holds.

Description

This is the publisher's final PDF. The article is avaliable (http://dx.doi.org/10.1214/193940307000000040) in the IMS Collections by the Institute of Mathematical Statistics

DOI

10.1214/193940307000000040

Persistent Identifier

http://archives.pdx.edu/ds/psu/9518

Included in

Mathematics Commons

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