Some matched comparisons of two distributions of survival time

A theoretical analysis is made of the properties of various methods for comparing two distributions of survival time. The results are intended primarily to guide the choice of method of analysis for such simple comparisons as of a treatment versus a control, but the main implications are fairly general, illustrating the performance of different models in a range of conditions. For most of the models there is a parameter specifying the comparison of interest and the Fisher information per observation can be calculated for that parameter, and provides a succinct basis for comparison. Two of the models are semiparametric and the others are based on exponential distributions with or without extra sources of variability.