Some New Estimators for Small-Area Means With Application to the Assessment of Farmland Values
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 formula 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…