In the last years a central issue in regional economic growth debate is represented by the convergence problem. Many empirical economists have noticed that per-worker GDP of poor regions tend to converge to those of richer regions. However more recently it has been observed that the economic...

The research and its outcomes presented here focus on spatial sampling of agricultural resources. The authors introduce sampling designs and methods for producing accurate estimates of crop production for harvests across different regions and countries. With the help of real and simulated...

Small area estimators are often based on linear mixed models under the assumption that relationships among variables are stationary across the area of interest (Fay–Herriot models). This hypothesis is patently violated when the population is divided into heterogeneous latent subgroups. In this...