Modern systems of official statistics require the accurate and timely estimation of socio-demographic indicators for disaggregated geographical regions. Traditional data collection methods such as censuses or household surveys impose great financial and organizational burdens for National...

Modern systems of official statistics require the timely estimation of area-specific densities of sub-populations. Ideally estimates should be based on precise geo-coded information, which is not available due to confidentiality constraints. One approach for ensuring confidentiality is by...

Nonresponse in surveys may result in a distortion of the distribution of interest. In a panel survey the participation behavior in later waves is different from the participation behavior at the start. With register data that cover also the information for non-respondents one can observe a fade...

Geographically weighted small area methods have been studied in literature for small area estimation. Although these approaches are useful for the estimation of small area means efficiently under strict parametric assumptions, they can be very sensitive to outliers in the data. In this paper, we...

Among a variety of small area estimation methods, one popular approach for the estimation of linear and non-linear indicators is the empirical best predictor. However, parameter estimation using standard maximum likelihood methods is not possible, when the dependent variable of the underlying...

There has been increased interest in the use of "big data" when it comes to forecasting macroeconomic time series such as private consumption or unemployment. However, applications on forecasting GDP are rather rare. In this paper we incorporate Google search data into a Bridge Equation Model, a...

More than 25 years after German reunification, key economic indicators for households living in eastern German regions are still below the western German levels. This particularly holds for private net wealth, which reaches only about 40% of the western German level. However, a more granular...