B1460
Title: Ancestral inference for age-dependent branching processes with immigration
Authors: Anand Vidyashankar - George Mason University (United States) [presenting]
Abstract: Age-dependent branching processes are routinely used to model various dynamical models arising in biological and physical systems. In some of these applications, the initial number of ancestors initiating the process is unknown, and it is of critical importance to estimate the parameters associated with the ancestral distribution for addressing meaningful scientific questions. We describe a new estimated martingale technique to develop an estimator for the parameters of the ancestral distribution. We establish the asymptotic properties of the estimators under both the true model and under model misspecification. Extensions to birth-death processes will also be indicated.