Maximum Approximate Bernstein Likelihood Estimation in Proportional Hazard Model for Interval-Censored Data

Abstract: Maximum approximate Bernstein likelihood estimates of the baseline density function and the regression coefficients in the proportional hazard regression models based on interval-censored event time data are proposed. This results in not only a smooth estimate of the survival function which enjoys faster convergence rate but also improved estimates of the regression coefficients. Simulation shows that the finite sample performance of the proposed method is better than the existing ones. The proposed method is illustrated by real data applications.