The generalized kullback-leibler divergence and robust inference

This paper examines robust techniques for estimation and tests of hypotheses using the family of generalized Kullback-Leibler (GKL) divergences. The GKL family is a new group of density based divergences which forms a subclass of disparities defined by Lindsay (1994). We show that the corresponding minimum divergence estimators have a breakdown point of 50% under the model. The performance of the proposed estimators and tests are investigated through an extensive numerical study involving real-data examples and simulation results. The results show that the proposed methods are attractive choices for highly efficient and robust methods.