Development and Evaluation of an Optimal Composite Estimator in Spatial Microsimulation Small Area Estimation

A range of data is of geographic interest but is not available at a small area level from existing data sources. Small area estimation (SAE) offers techniques to estimate population parameters of target variables to detailed scales based on relationships between those target variables and relevant auxiliary variables. The resulting indirect small area estimate can deliver a lower mean squared error compared to its direct survey estimate, given that variance can be reduced markedly even if bias increases. Spatial microsimulation SAE approaches are widely utilized but only beginning to engage with the potential of composite estimators that use a weighted combination of indirect and direct estimators to reduce further the mean squared error of the small area estimate compared to an indirect SAE estimator alone. This article advances these approaches by constructing for the first time in the microsimulation literature an optimal composite estimator for such SAE approaches in which the combining weight is calculated from the mean squared errors of the two estimators; thus, optimizing the reduction in MSE of the resulting small area estimates. This optimal composite estimator is demonstrated and evaluated in a model-based simulation study and application based on the real data.     

Colonial Australia,the 1887 Colonial Conference,and the Struggle for Imperial Unity

ABSTRACT

For historians interested in the settler colonial world, one of Professor John Darwin’s most important interventions has been to argue for the reintegration of the dominions into the wider history of the British empire. In re-engaging with the history of Britain’s white settler colonies in North America, Australasia, and South Africa, Darwin’s work has sought to emphasize the place of the dominions in relation to the rise and fall of the British world system, as well as their value as vantage points from which to consider imperial and global history more generally. In this regard, Darwin’s systemic approach has encouraged a more dynamic conception of ‘British world’ history – one deeply embedded in a series of overlapping imperial, regional, and international contexts. This article focuses on a particular moment in imperial history where some of the internal dynamics of the late-Victorian British world system, and the changing place of the settler colonies within it, were brought into sharp relief: the 1887 Colonial Conference. It argues that we might look to the conference as a valuable window onto the impact of Anglo-Australian relations upon the wider struggle for imperial unity in the 1880s.