Small-area estimation with spatial similarity

Nicholas Longford ()
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Nicholas Longford: http://www.econ.upf.edu/en/people/onefaculty.php?id=p3200

Economics Working Papers from Department of Economics and Business, Universitat Pompeu Fabra

Abstract: We derive a class of composite estimators of small-area quantities that exploit spatial (distance-related) similarity. They are based on a distribution-free model for the areas, but the estimators are aimed to have optimal design-based properties. Composition is applied also to estimating some of the global parameters on which the small-area estimators depend. We show that the commonly adopted assumption of random effects is not necessary for exploiting the similarity of the districts (borrowing strength across the districts). The methods are applied to estimation of the mean household sizes and the proportions of single-member households in the counties (comarcas) of Catalonia.

Keywords: Auxiliary information; composite estimation; design-based estimator; exploiting similarity; model-based estimator; multivariate shrinkage; small-area estimation; spatial similarity (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C1 C13 C14 C15 C4 C42 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ecm, nep-geo and nep-ure
Date: Written 2008-07
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