Smooth and non-smooth estimates of a monotone hazard

Abstract: We discuss a number of estimates of the hazard under the assumption that the hazard is monotone on an interval [0,a]. The usual isotonic least squares estimators of the hazard are inconsistent at the boundary points 0 and a. We use penalization to obtain uniformly consistent estimators. Moreover, we determine the optimal penalization constants, extending related work in this direction by Woodroofe and Sun (1993) and Woodroofe and Sun (1999). Two methods of obtaining smooth monotone estimates based on a non-smooth monotone estimator are discussed. One is based on kernel smoothing, the other on penalization.