Rao-Blackwellization to give Improved Estimates in Multi-List Studies

Abstract: Sufficient statistics are derived for the population size and parameters of commonly used closed population mark-recapture models. Rao-Blackwellization details for improving estimators that are not functions of the statistics are presented. As Rao-Blackwellization entails enumerating all sample reorderings consistent with the sufficient statistic, Markov chain Monte Carlo resampling procedures are provided to approximate the computationally intensive estimators. Simulation studies demonstrate that significant improvements can be made with the strategy. Supplementary materials for this article are available online.