Data on fresh milk expenditure, used by Arora and Lahiri (1997) and by You and Chapman (2006).
milkA data frame with 43 observations on the following 6 variables.
areas of inferential interest.
sample sizes of small areas.
average expenditure on fresh milk for the year 1989 (direct estimates for the small areas).
estimated standard deviations of yi.
variance sampling from the direct estimator (yi) for each area
estimated coefficients of variation of yi.
major areas created by You and Chapman (2006). These areas have similar direct estimates and produce a large CV reduction when using a FH model.
Arora, V. and Lahiri, P. (1997). On the superiority of the Bayesian method over the BLUP in small area estimation problems. Statistica Sinica 7, 1053-1063.
You, Y. and Chapman, B. (2006). Small area estimation using area level models and estimated sampling variances. Survey Methodology 32, 97-103.