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Abstract:
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In this research, we study the properties of a special class of frailty models when the frailty is common to several failure times. The model is closely linked to Archimedean copula models. We establish a useful formula for baseline hazard functions for this class of frailty models. We then propose a new estimator for baseline hazard functions in bivariate frailty models based on dependent censored data with covariates. From our simulation studies, our estimator for baseline hazard functions outperforms the well-known Breslow estimator in general as we can obtain much more stable parameter and hazard function estimates using our estimator in EM algorithm. We fit a leukemia data set using our model and end our paper with some discussions.
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