We present an analysis of the register of all unemployment episodes in the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg over a recent period of 55 months. We apply propensity score matching to account for the systematic differences among the groups of subjects (registrants) and unemployment spells. We devise...

A method of small-area estimation with a utility function is developed. The utility characterises a policy planned to be implemented in each area, based on the area's estimate of a key quantity. It is shown by simulations that the commonly applied composite and empirical Bayes estimators are...

We show on an application to small-area statistics that efficient estimation is not always conducive to good policy decisions, because the established inferential procedures have no capacity to incorporate the priorities and preferences of the policy makers and the related consequences of...

We compare a set of empirical Bayes and composite estimators of the population means of the districts (small areas) of a country, and show that the natural modelling strategy of searching for a well fitting empirical Bayes model and using it for estimation of the area-level means can be inefficient.

A class of composite estimators of small area quantities that exploit spatial (distancerelated) similarity is derived. It is based on a distribution-free model for the areas, but the estimators are aimed to have optimal design-based properties. Composition is applied also to estimate some of the...

We formulate performance assessment as a problem of causal analysis and outline an approach based on the missing data principle for its solution. It is particularly relevant in the context of so-called league tables for educational, health-care and other public-service institutions. The proposed...

Several estimators of the expectation, median and mode of the lognormal distribution are derived. They aim to be approximately unbiased, efficient, or have a minimax property in the class of estimators we introduce. The small-sample properties of these estimators are assessed by simulations and,...

Current methods for constructing house price indices are based on comparisons of sale prices of residential properties sold two or more times and on regression of the sale prices on the attributes of the properties and of their locations. The two methods have well recognised deficiencies,...

This report comprises four reactions to the recent policy statement in Basic and Applied Social Psychology that announced a ban on null-hypothesis testing in that journal. A personal perspective is presented which agrees with the editors that null-hypothesis testing has become dysfunctional, but...