MEAN SQUARED ERRORS OF SMALL AREA ESTIMATORS UNDER A UNIT-LEVEL MULTIVARIATE MODEL

Abstract

This work deals with estimating the vector of means of characteristics of small areas. In this context, a unit level multivariate model with correlated sampling errors is considered. An approximation is obtained for the mean squared and cross product errors of the empirical best linear unbiased predictors of the means. This approach has been implemented on a Monte Carlo study using economic data observed for a sample of Australian farms.