María Dolores Esteban, Domingo Morales, Agustín Pérez (Center of Operations Research, Miguel Hernández University of Elche) María José Lombardía (Research Center CITIC, Universidade da Coruña) and Esther López-Vizcaíno (Instituto Galego de Estatística)
Abstract: This paper introduces empirical best predictors of small area bivariate parameters, like ratios of sums or sums of ratios, by assuming that the target unit-level vector follows a bivariate nested error regression model. The corresponding means squared errors are estimated by parametric bootstrap. Several simulation experiments empirically study the behavior of the introduced statistical methodology. An application to real data from the Spanish household budget survey gives estimators of ratios of food household expenditures by provinces.