Influence functions and robust Bayes and empirical Bayes small area estimation

We introduce new robust small area estimation procedures basedon area-level models. We first find influence functions correspondingto each individual area-level observation by measuring the divergencebetween the posterior density functions of regression coefficientswith and without that observation. Next, based on these influencefunctions, properly standardized, we propose some new robustBayes and empirical Bayes small area estimators. The mean squarederrors and estimated mean squared errors of these estimatorsare also found. A small simulation study compares the performanceof the robust and the regular empirical Bayes estimators. Whenthe model variance is larger than the sample variance, the proposedrobust empirical Bayes estimators are superior.