Tweedie regression models provide a flexible family of distributions to deal
with non-negative highly right-skewed data as well as symmetric and heavy
tailed data and can handle continuous data with probability mass at zero. The
estimation and inference of Tweedie regression models based on the maximum
likelihood method are challenged by the presence of an infinity sum in the
probability function and non-trivial restrictions on the power parameter space.
In this paper, we propose two approaches for fitting Tweedie regression models,
namely, quasi- and pseudo-likelihood. We discuss the asymptotic properties of
the two approaches and perform simulation studies to compare our methods with
the maximum likelihood method. In particular, we show that the quasi-likelihood
method provides asymptotically efficient estimation for regression parameters.
The computational implementation of the alternative methods is faster and
easier than the orthodox maximum likelihood, relying on a simple Newton scoring
algorithm. Simulation studies showed that the quasi- and pseudo-likelihood
approaches present estimates, standard errors and coverage rates similar to the
maximum likelihood method. Furthermore, the second-moment assumptions required
by the quasi- and pseudo-likelihood methods enables us to extend the Tweedie
regression models to the class of quasi-Tweedie regression models in the
Wedderburn's style. Moreover, it allows to eliminate the non-trivial
restriction on the power parameter space, and thus provides a flexible
regression model to deal with continuous data. We provide \texttt{R}
implementation and illustrate the application of Tweedie regression models
using three data sets.Comment: 34 pages, 8 figure