Partitioning likelihood method in the analysis of non-monotone missing data

We address the problem of parameter estimation in multivariate distributions under ignorable non-monotone missing data. The factoring likelihood method for monotone missing data, termed by Robin (1974), is extended to a more general case of non-monotone missing data. The proposed method is algebraically equivalent to the Newton-Raphson method for the observed likelihood, but avoids the burden of computing the first and the second partial derivatives of the observed likelihood Instead, the maximum likelihood estimates and their information matrices for each partition of the data set are computed separately and combined naturally using the generalized least squares method. A numerical example is also presented to illustrate the method.