Bias corrected variance stabilizing transformation for small area estimation

Small area estimation models are typically based on the normality assumption of response variables. More recently, attention has been drawn to the transformation of the original variables to justify the assumption of normality. Variance stabilizing transformation of observation serves the dual purpose of reaching closer to normality, as well as known variance of the transformed variables in contrast to the assumption of known variances of the original variables, the latter needed to avoid non-identifiability. However, the existing literature on the topic ignores a certain bias introduced in the seemingly correct back transformation. The present paper rectifies this deficiency by introducing asymptotically unbiased empirical Bayes (EB) estimators of small area means. Mean squared errors (MSEs) and estimated MSEs of such estimators are provided. The theoretical results are accompanied with simulations and data analysis. A somewhat surprising phenomenon is a finding which connects one of our results to the natural exponential family quadratic variance function (NEF-QVF) family of distributions introduced by Morris (1982,1983).