Some New Estimators for Small-Area Means With Application to the Assessment of Farmland Values |
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Authors: | Danny Pfeffermann Charles H Barnard |
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Institution: | 1. Department of Statistics , Hebrew University , Jerusalem , Israel , 91905;2. Economic Research Service, U.S. Department of Agriculture , Washington , DC , 20005/4788 |
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Abstract: | Regression models that account for main state effects and nested county effects are considered for the assessment of farmland values. Empirical predictors obtained by replacing the unknown variances in the formulas of the optimal predictors by maximum likelihood estimates are presented. The computations are carried out by simple iterations between two SAS procedures. Estimators for the prediction variances are derived, and a modification to secure the robustness of the predictors is proposed. The procedure is applied to data on nonirrigated cropland in the Corn Belt states and is shown to yield predictors with considerably lower prediction mean squared errors than the survey estimators and other regression-type estimators. |
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Keywords: | Components of variance Fitting constants Mixed models Prediction MSE |
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