Defective regression models for cure rate data with competing risks.

In this paper, we propose a novel method for the analysis of cure rate data with competing risks using defective distributions. We develop two defective regression models for the analysis of competing risk data subjected to random right censoring. The proposed models enable us to estimate the cure fraction directly from the model. Simultaneously, we also estimate the regression parameters corresponding to each cause of failure using the method of maximum likelihood. We conduct a simulation study to evaluate the finite sample performance of the proposed estimators. The practical usefulness of the procedures is illustrated using two real-life data sets.