Optimal-order bounds on the rate of convergence to normality for maximum likelihood estimators
Abstract
It is well known that under general regularity conditions the distribution of the maximum likelihood estimator (MLE) is asymptotically normal. Very recently, bounds of the optimal order on the closeness of the distribution of the MLE to normality in the so-called bounded Wasserstein distance were obtained, where is the sample size. However, the corresponding bounds on the Kolmogorov distance were only of the order . In this note, bounds of the optimal order on the closeness of the distribution of the MLE to normality in the Kolmogorov distance are given, as well as their nonuniform counterparts, which work better for large deviations of the MLE. These results are based on previously obtained general optimal-order bounds on the rate of convergence to normality in the multivariate delta method. The crucial observation is that, under natural conditions, the MLE can be tightly enough bracketed between two smooth enough functions of the sum of independent random vectors, which makes the delta method applicable.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.1601.02177,
title = {Optimal-order bounds on the rate of convergence to normality for maximum likelihood estimators},
author = {Iosif Pinelis},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1601.02177},
year = {2016}
}
Comments
Version 2: It is shown in the added appendix that (under some regularity conditions) certain structural assumptions used in certain previous papers can only hold when the family of densities is a one-parameter exponential one. Version 3: Condition (ix) in Proposition A.1 in Version 2 of this paper is removed