A national survey designed for estimating a specific population quantity is sometimes used for estimation of this quantity also for a small area, such as a province. Budget constraints do not allow a greater sample size for the small area, and so other means of improving estimation have to be...

This paper investigates the comparative performance of five small area estimators. We use Monte Carlo simulation in the context of both theoretical and empirical populations. In addition to the direct and indirect estimators, we consider the optimal composite estimator with population weights,...

In this article we propose using small area estimators to improve the estimates of both the small and large area parameters. When the objective is to estimate parameters at both levels accurately, optimality is achieved by a mixed sample design of fixed and proportional allocations. In the mixed...