Non-negative estimation of variance components in heteroscedastic one-way random-effects ANOVA models

There is a considerable amount of literature dealing with inference about the parameters in a heteroscedastic one-way random-effects ANOVA model. In this paper, we primarily address the problem of improved quadratic estimation of the random-effect variance component. It turns out that such estimators with a smaller mean squared error compared with some standard unbiased quadratic estimators exist under quite general conditions. Improved estimators of the error variance components are also established.