Leverage adjustments for dispersion modelling in generalized nonlinear models

© 2009 Australian Statistical Publishing Association Inc. Published by Blackwell Publishing Asia Pty Ltd.For normal linear models, it is generally accepted that residual maximum likelihood estimation is appropriate when covariance components require estimation. This paper considers generalized linear models in which both the mean and the dispersion are allowed to depend on unknown parameters and on covariates. For these models there is no closed form equivalent to residual maximum likelihood except in very special cases. Using a modified profile likelihood for the dispersion parameters, an adjusted score vector and adjusted information matrix are found under an asymptotic development that holds as the leverages in the mean model become small. Subsequently, the expectation of the fitted deviances is obtained directly to show that the adjusted score vector is unbiased at least to O(1/n). Exact results are obtained in the single-sample case. The results reduce to residual maximum likelihood estimation in the normal linear case. © 2009 Australian Statistical Publishing Association Inc.Gordon K. Smyth and Arunas P. Verbyl