Multivariate Global-Local Priors for Small Area Estimation

Abstract

It is now widely recognized that small area estimation (SAE) needs to be model-based. Global-local (GL) shrinkage priors for random effects are important in sparse situations where many areas’ level effects do not have a significant impact on the response beyond what is offered by covariates. We propose in this paper a hierarchical multivariate model with GL priors. We prove the propriety of the posterior density when the regression coefficient matrix has an improper uniform prior. Some concentration inequalities are derived for the tail probabilities of the shrinkage estimators. The proposed method is illustrated via both data analysis and simulations.

Keywords

• global-local prior
• small area estimation
• shrinkage estimators
• concentration inequalities
• hierarchical multivariate model
• posterior density