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For EM for zero-inflated negative binomial regression, at iteration $k$ apply Bayes theorem to each zero in the zero-inflated negative binomial model. The E step computes the conditional expectation of its latent indicator:Treating these values as fixed, the M step maximizes the expected complete-data log-likelihood. Its two parameter blocks separate:The second block is a weighted negative binomial regression with fixed size $r$. Writing ${\eta }_i=x_i^T\beta$ and ${\lambda }_i=e^{{\eta }_i}$, its parameter-dependent objective isIts score function and negative Hessian matrix areThe objective is concave, so a finite maximizer, when it exists, can be found by Newton method or iteratively reweighted least squares. The latter uses working response ${\eta }_i+(y_i-{\lambda }_i)/{\lambda }_i$ and weights $w_{i}r{\lambda }_i/(r+{\lambda }_i)$. This is not an unweighted regression on only the positive counts: zeros retain fractional weight in the count component.

Start with $0<\pi <1$ and finite coefficients, alternate the two steps, and monitor the observed log-likelihood. Exact maximization makes the expectation-maximization algorithm nondecreasing in that likelihood, although the mixture may have multiple stationary points. All-zero data can lead to boundary fits and poor identification; multiple initializations and explicit checks for boundary parameters are useful.