We propose a new small area estimation approach that combines small area random effects with a smooth, nonparametrically specified trend. By using penalized splines as the representation for the nonparametric trend, it is possible to express the small area estimation problem as a mixed effect...

Network (or matrix) reconstruction is a general problem that occurs if the marginsof a matrix are given and the matrix entries need to be predicted. In this paper,we show that the predictions obtained from the iterative proportional fitting procedure(IPFP) or equivalently maximum entropy (ME)...