SENSITIVITY AND ASYMPTOTIC PROPERTIES OF BAYESIAN RELIABILITY ESTIMATES

'In decision theoretic approaches to estimation problems, loss functions of the type L(0,8) = 18-1l, a> 0 are often employed; often a = 2. In-_--many applications of reliability and life testing, such loss functions are inappropriate. Alternative loss functions which appear to be more suited to the intended application are proposed and Bayesian estimates of the exponential parameter are obtained for these. Asymptotic expansions of such estimators are given and compared with estimators given in the literature. AMS (MOS) Subject Classification: 62N0