Asymptotic distribution of martingale estimatorsfor a class of epidemic models

摘要

This article is a contribution to the asymptotic inference on the parameters of a quite general class of stochastic models for the spread of epidemics developing in closed populations. Various epidemic models are contained within our framework, for instance, a stochastic version of the Kermack and McKendrick model and the SIS epidemic model. Each model belonging to this class, which consists in a family of discrete-time stochastic process, contains certain parameters to be estimated by means of martingale estimators. Some particular cases defined by means of Markov chains are included in our setting. The main aim of this work is to prove consistency and asymptotic normality of these estimators. Some hypothesis tests based on the main results are also shown.