Paper #995
- Title:
- An assessment of empirical Bayes and composite estimators for small areas
- Author:
- Nicholas Longford
- Date:
- November 2006
- Abstract:
- We compare a set of empirical Bayes and composite estimators of the population means of the districts (small areas) of a country, and show that the natural modelling strategy of searching for a well fitting empirical Bayes model and using it for estimation of the area-level means can be inefficient.
- Keywords:
- Composite estimator, empirical Bayes models, mean squared error, small-area estimation
- JEL codes:
- C15
- Area of Research:
- Statistics, Econometrics and Quantitative Methods
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