An alternative to regression procedure to produce area sample breakdowns of the monthly national estimates of the retail trade survey

Abstract

The paper describes an alternative to regression procedure developed by Woodruff (1966) to produce estimates of geographic subsets of the original population from a national sample. The proposed procedure always produces positive estimates consistent with each other and with the regional and national estimates. The procedure, however, will be less efficient when sample unbiased estimates and corresponding census data are highly correlated. The results are illustrated with a numerical example.