A unified analysis of likelihood-based estimators in the Plackett–Luce model
研究了Plackett-Luce模型中通过最大化不同似然（全似然、边际似然、拟似然）估计效用向量的渐近性质，建立了估计量的一致性和渐近正态性，并讨论了统计效率与计算复杂度的权衡。
The Plackett–Luce model has been extensively used for rank aggregation in social choice theory. A central statistical question in this model concerns estimating the utility vector that governs the model’s likelihood. In this paper, we investigate the asymptotic theory of utility vector estimation by maximizing different types of likelihood, such as full, marginal, and quasi-likelihood. Starting from interpreting the estimating equations of these estimators to gain some initial insights, we analyze their asymptotic behavior as the number of compared objects increases. In particular, we establish both uniform consistency and asymptotic normality of these estimators and discuss the trade-off between statistical efficiency and computational complexity. For generality, our results are proven for deterministic graph sequences under appropriate graph topology conditions. These conditions are shown to be informative when applied to common sampling scenarios, such as nonuniform random hypergraph models and hypergraph stochastic block models. Numerical results are provided to support our findings.