Estimation of the parameters of the gamma distribution by means of a maximal invariant

The use of a scale invariance criterion allows estimation of the shape parameter of the two parameter gamma distribution without estimating the scale parameter. Simulation experiments are used to show that the resulting estimators of both parameters are better than the usual maximum likelihood estimators in terms of both bias and mean square error. Approximately unbiased versions of the maximal invariant based estimators are derived and are shown to be as good as approximately unbiased versions of the usual maximum likelihood estimators