Computing the maximum likelihood estimator

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Problem: Consider a random sample of size $n$ that follows a density probability function given by:

$$f(x,\theta)=\frac{1}{\theta} x^{-\frac{\theta+1}{\theta}}\mathbb{1}_{(1,+\infty)},\:\:\theta>0$$

where $\theta$ is unknown.

1) Determine the maximum likelihood estimator of $\theta$? Is the found estimator consistent?

**2)**Provide an sufficient statistic for this model.

1)

$L=\prod_\limits{i=1}^{n}f(x,\theta)=\frac{1}{{\theta}^n} x^{-\frac{{(\theta+1)}^n}{{\theta}^n}}\mathbb{1}_{(1,+\infty)}$

In order to find $\theta$ I have to compute:

$\frac{dL}{d\theta}=0\implies\frac {d{\frac{1}{{\theta}^n} x^{-\frac{{(\theta+1)}^n}{{\theta}^n}}\mathbb{1}_{(1,+\infty)}}{}}{d\theta}=0$

However this derivative is very difficult to calculate.

For the second question I was thinking about the maximum likelihood estimator as a possible sufficient estimator.

Question:

Is there another way to find the maximum likelihood ratio besides the derivative?

Thanks in advance!

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Your definition of likelihood is incorrect. Yours assumes each data point has the same value. Instead, each can (and does) have a different value. Replace $x$ by $x_i$ and then perform your derivative with respect to $\theta$.

$$L = \frac{1}{\theta^n} \left[ x_1^{(1-\theta)/\theta} x_2^{(1-\theta)/\theta} \cdots x_n^{(1-\theta)/\theta} \right]$$

It is simplest, though, to work with the loglikelihood...

$$l \equiv \ln L = - n \ln \theta + \frac{1-\theta}{\theta} \sum\limits_{i=1}^n \ln x_i$$

Now compute $$\frac{d l}{d \theta} = \frac{-n}{\theta} + \frac{1}{\theta (\theta - 1)} \sum\limits_{i=1}^n \ln x_i$$

and set it to zero to find:

$$\hat{\theta} = \left( \frac{1}{n} \sum\limits_{i=1}^n \ln x_i \right) + 1$$