A note on ratio and product type estimators

Summary The use of ratio and product estimators for the mean of a finite population is well known. This paper proposes transformed estimators obtained through parametric linear combination of the ratio, or product, and the usual unbiased estimator of the mean for any sample design. To the first degree of approximation, the proposed estimators have smaller mean square error than that of the ratio, product and the usual unbiased estimator, for suitable choice of the parameter. The superiority of the proposed estimators over others for small samples has been studied empirically.