Inference on a class of exponential families on permutations

In this paper we study a class of exponential family on permutations, which includes some of the commonly studied Mallows models. We show that the pseudo-likelihood estimator for the natural parameter in the exponential family is asymptotically normal, with an explicit variance. Using this, we are able to construct asymptotically valid confidence intervals. We also show that the MLE for the same problem is consistent everywhere, and asymptotically normal at the origin. In this special case, the asymptotic variance of the cost effective pseudo-likelihood estimator turns out to be the same as the cost prohibitive MLE. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first inference result on permutation models including Mallows models, excluding the very special case of Mallows model with Kendall's Tau.