An important property of Fisher information is that it decreases weakly under transformation of random variables. Kagan and Rao (2003) [A. Kagan, C.R. Rao, Some properties and applications of the efficient Fisher score, J. Statist. Plann. Inference 116 (2003) 343–352] showed that, in the...

Normal-distribution-based maximum likelihood (ML) and multiple imputation (MI) are the two major procedures for missing data analysis. This article compares the two procedures with respects to bias and efficiency of parameter estimates. It also compares formula-based standard errors (SEs) for...

We consider maximum likelihood (ML) estimation of mean and covariance structure models when data are missing. Expectation maximization (EM), generalized expectation maximization (GEM), Fletcher-Powell, and Fisher-scoring algorithms are described for parameter estimation. It is shown how the...