Efficient semiparametric estimators via modified profile likelihood

A new strategy is developed for obtaining large-sample efficient estimators of finite-dimensional parameters β within semiparametric statistical models. The key idea is to maximize over β a nonparametric log-likelihood with the infinite-dimensional nuisance parameter λ replaced by a consistent preliminary estimator λ ˜ β of the Kullback–Leibler minimizing value λ β for fixed β . It is shown that the parametric submodel with Kullback–Leibler minimizer substituted for λ is generally a least-favorable model. Results extending those of Severini and Wong (Ann. Statist. 20 (1992) 1768) then establish efficiency of the estimator of β maximizing log-likelihood with λ replaced for fixed β by λ ˜ β . These theoretical results are specialized to censored linear regression and to a class of semiparametric survival analysis regression models including the proportional hazards models with unobserved random effect or `frailty', the latter through results of Slud and Vonta (Scand. J. Statist. 31 (2004) 21) characterizing the restricted Kullback–Leibler information minimizers.