Mixtures of semiparametric varying coefficient models for longitudinal data with nonignorable dropout

Informative dropout often arise in longitudinal data. In this paper we propose a mixture model in which the responses follow a semiparametric varying coefficient random effects model and some of the regression coefficients depend on the dropout time in a non-parametric way. The local linear version of the profile-kernel method is used to estimate the parameters of the model. The proposed estimators are shown to be consistent and asymptotically normal, and the finite performance of the estimators is evaluated by numerical simulation.