Comparison of two variances under inequality constraints by using empirical likelihood method

Abstract

In this article, the empirical likelihood introduced by Owen Biometrika, 75, 237–249 (1988) is applied to test the variances of two populations under inequality constraints on the parameter space. One reason that we do the research is because many literatures in this area are limited to testing the mean of one population or means of more than one populations; the other but much more important reason is: even if two or more populations are considered, the parameter space is always without constraint. In reality, parameter space with some kind of constraints can be met everywhere. Nuisance parameter is unavoidable in this case and makes the estimators unstable. Therefore the analysis on it becomes rather complicated. We focus our work on the relatively complicated testing issue over two variances under inequality constraints, leaving the issue over two means to be its simple ratiocination. We prove that the limiting distribution of the empirical likelihood ratio test statistic is either a single chi-square distribution or the mixture of two equally weighted chi-square distributions.