Abstract
We consider the following semi-parametric non-linear mixed effect regression model : y\ulcorner=f($\chi$\ulcorner;$\beta$)+$\sigma$$\mu$($\chi$\ulcorner)+$\sigma$$\varepsilon$\ulcorner,i=1,…,n,y*=f($\chi$;$\beta$)+$\sigma$$\mu$($\chi$) where y'=(y\ulcorner,…,y\ulcorner) is a vector of n observations, y* is an unobserved new random variable of interest, f($\chi$;$\beta$) represents fixed effect of known functional form containing unknown parameter vector $\beta$\ulcorner=($\beta$$_1$,…,$\beta$\ulcorner), $\mu$($\chi$) is a random function of mean zero and the known covariance function r(.,.), $\varepsilon$'=($\varepsilon$$_1$,…,$\varepsilon$\ulcorner) is the set of uncorrelated measurement errors with zero mean and unit variance and $\sigma$ is an unknown dispersion(scale) parameter. On the basis of finite-sample, small-dispersion asymptotic framework, we derive an absolute lower bound for the asymptotic mean squared errors of prediction(AMSEP) of the regular-consistent non-linear predictors of the new random variable of interest y*. Then we construct an optimal predictor of y* which attains the lower bound irrespective of types of distributions of random effect $\mu$(.) and measurement errors $\varepsilon$.