JEL ratio test for independence of time to failure and cause of failure in competing risks

Abstract: In the present article, we propose jackknife empirical likelihood (JEL) ratio test for testing the independence of time to failure and cause of failure in competing risks data. We use U-statistic theory to derive the JEL ratio test. The asymptotic distribution of the test statistic is shown to be chi-square distribution with one degree of freedom. A Monte Carlo simulation study is carried out to assess the finite sample behaviour of the proposed test. The performance of proposed JEL test is compared with the test given in Dewan et al. (2004). Finally we illustrate our test procedure using various real data sets.