Parameter estimation for the supercritical contact process

Abstract

Contact processes -- and, more generally, interacting particle processes -- can serve as models for a large variety of statistical problems, especially if we allow some simple modifications that do not essentially complicate the mathematical treatment of these processes. We begin a statistical study of the supercritical contact process that starts with a single infected site at the origin and is conditioned on survival of the infection. We consider the statistical problem of estimating the parameter $\lambda$ of the process on the basis of an observation of the process at a single time $t$. We propose an estimator of $\lambda$ and show that it is consistent and asymptotically normal as $t \rightarrow \infty$.