A Preliminary Investigation of Maximum Likelihood Logistic Regression versus Exact Logistic Regression (PDF: 1,127KB)
by Elizabeth N. King and Thomas P. Ryan
The American Statistician, August 2002, Vol. 56, No. 3, pp 163-170
Excerpt: ". . . maximum likelihood can produce very poor, even nonsensical, results under certain conditions."

A Modified Score Function Estimator for Multinomial Logistic Regression in Small Samples (PDF: 161KB)
by Shelley B. Bull, Carmen Mak, Celiea M.T. Greenwood
Computational Statistics and Data Analysis, 39 (2002) pp 57-74

Efficient Monte Carlo Methods for Conditional Logistic Regression (PDF 140KB)
by Cyrus R. Mehta, Nitin R. Patel and Pralay Senchaudhuri
Journal of the American Statistical Association, March 2000, Vol. 95, No. 449, Theory and Methods, pp 99-108