Block empirical likelihood for longitudinal partially linear regression models

The authors propose a block empirical likelihood procedure to accommodate the within-group correlation in longitudinal partially linear regression models. This leads them to prove a nonparametric version of the Wilks theorem. In comparison with normal approximations, their method does not require a consistent estimator for the asymptotic covariance matrix, which makes it easier to conduct inference on the parametric component of the model. An application to a longitudinal study on fluctuations of progesterone level in a menstrual cycle is used to illustrate the procedure developed here.