Date of Award

12-2009

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy

Department

Statistics

First Advisor

Dr. Magdalena Niewiadomska-Bugaj

Second Advisor

Dr. Joshua Naranjo

Third Advisor

Dr. Jung-Chao Wang

Fourth Advisor

Dr. Marlon Rebelatto

Abstract

Zero-inflated continuous distributions have positive probability mass at zero in addition to a continuous distribution. Such type of data can be encountered, for example, in medical, environmental and financial research. The main focus of this research is to study the association of nonnegative random variables, both having a positive probability mass at zero. New estimators of the classical measures of association, Kendall's tau and Spearman's rho, appropriate for the zero-inflated distributions, are proposed and their asymptotic distributions are derived. Performance of the estimators is assessed by a Monte Carlo simulation study. New ideas are illustrated by a real data example.

Access Setting

Dissertation-Open Access

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