On the asymptotics of marginal regression splines with longitudinal data

There have been studies on how the asymptotic efficiency of a nonparametric function estimator depends on the handling of the within-cluster correlation when nonparametric regression models are used on longitudinal or cluster data. In particular, methods based on smoothing splines and local polynomial kernels exhibit different behaviour. We show that the generalized estimation equations based on weighted least squares regression splines for the nonparametric function have an interesting property: the asymptotic bias of the estimator does not depend on the working correlation matrix, but the asymptotic variance, and therefore the mean squared error, is minimized when the true correlation structure is specified. This property of the asymptotic bias distinguishes regression splines from smoothing splines. © 2008 Biometrika Trust.link_to_subscribed_fulltex