Some Superpopulation Models for Estimating the Number of Population Uniques

Akimichi Takemura
Additional contact information
Akimichi Takemura: Faculty of Economics, University of Tokyo.

No 97-F-29, CIRJE F-Series from CIRJE, Faculty of Economics, University of Tokyo

Abstract: The number of the unique individuals in the population is of great importance in evaluating the disclosure risk of a microdata set. We approach this problem by considering some basic superpopulation models including the gamma-Poisson model of Bethlehem et al.(1990). We introduce Dirichlet-multinomial model which is closely related but more basic than the gamma-Poisson model, in the sense that binomial distribution is more basic than Poisson distribution. We also discuss the Ewens model and show that it can be obtained from the Dirichlet-multinomial model by a limiting argument similar to the law of small numbers. The multivariate Ewens distribution is a basic mathematical model used in genetics. Estimation of the number of the population uniques is particularly simple under the Ewens model. Although these models might not necessarily well fit actual populations, they can be considered as basic mathematical models for our problem, as binomial and Poisson distributions are considered as basic models for count data.

Pages: 18 pages
Date: 1997-09
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.cirje.e.u-tokyo.ac.jp/research/dp/97/f29/contents.htm (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:tky:fseres:97f29

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in CIRJE F-Series from CIRJE, Faculty of Economics, University of Tokyo Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by CIRJE administrative office ().