Hierarchical models are extensively studied and widely used in statistics and many other scientific areas. They provide an effective tool for combining information from similar resources and achieving partial pooling of inference. Since the seminal work by James and Stein (1961) and Stein...

The compound decision problem for a vector of independent Poisson random variables with possibly different means has a half-century-old solution. However, it appears that the classical solution needs smoothing adjustment. We discuss three such adjustments. We also present another approach that...