Estimating function method for product autoregressive models

The first-order product autoregressive (PAR(1)) model introduced by McKenzie in 1982 McKenzie, E. D. (1982). Product autoregression: A time series characterization of the gamma distribution. Journal of Applied Probability 19:463–468. [Google Scholar] did not attract the attention of practitioners due to the unavailability of a proper estimation method. This article proposes an estimating function (EF) method to fill the gap. In particular, we suggest an optimal combination of linear and quadratic EFs to overcome the problem of parameter identification. The procedure is applied to Weibull and Gamma PAR(1) models. Simulation and data analysis show that the proposed method performs better than the existing methods.