In some problems involving functional data, it is desired to undertake prediction or classification before the full trajectory of a function is observed. In such cases, it is often preferable to suffer somewhat greater error in return for making a decision relatively early. The prediction and...

type="main" xml:id="sjos12045-abs-0001" <title type="main">ABSTRACT</title>Small area estimation has long been a popular and important research topic due to its growing demand in public and private sectors. We consider here the basic area level model, popularly known as the Fay–Herriot model. Although much of current...

type="main" xml:id="sjos12061-abs-0001" <title type="main">ABSTRACT</title>The article considers a new approach for small area estimation based on a joint modelling of mean and variances. Model parameters are estimated via expectation–maximization algorithm. The conditional mean squared error is used to evaluate the...

Best linear unbiased prediction is well known for its wide range of applications including small area estimation. While the theory is well established for mixed linear models and under normality of the error and mixing distributions, the literature is sparse for nonlinear mixed models under...