Individual Shrinkage for Random Effects (opens in new tab)

This paper develops an approach to random effects estimation and individual-level forecasting in micropanels that targets individual accuracy rather than aggregate performance. The conventional shrinkage methods used in the literature, such as the James-Stein estimator and Empirical Bayes, target aggregate performance and can lead to inaccurate decisions at the individual level. We propose a class of shrinkage estimators with individual weig...