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June, 1982 A Useful Empirical Bayes Identity
Noel Cressie
Ann. Statist. 10(2): 625-629 (June, 1982). DOI: 10.1214/aos/1176345804

Abstract

For any decision problem, one wishes to find that estimator which minimizes the expected loss. If the loss function is squared error, then the estimator is the mean of the Bayes posterior distribution. Unfortunately the prior distribution may be unknown, but in certain situations empirical Bayes methods can circumvent this problem by using past observations to estimate either the prior or the Bayes estimate directly. Empirical Bayes methods are particularly appealing when the Bayes estimate depends only on the marginal distribution of the observed variable, yielding what is known as a simple empirical Bayes estimate. The paper looks at the underlying circumstance of when a simple empirical Bayes estimator is available, and shows its occurrence not to be happenstance.

Citation

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Noel Cressie. "A Useful Empirical Bayes Identity." Ann. Statist. 10 (2) 625 - 629, June, 1982. https://doi.org/10.1214/aos/1176345804

Information

Published: June, 1982
First available in Project Euclid: 12 April 2007

zbMATH: 0492.62030
MathSciNet: MR653538
Digital Object Identifier: 10.1214/aos/1176345804

Subjects:
Primary: 62F10
Secondary: 62P15

Keywords: Bayes estimator , binomial model , exponential families , linear functionals , power series distribution

Rights: Copyright © 1982 Institute of Mathematical Statistics

Vol.10 • No. 2 • June, 1982
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