On optimal parameter estimation in credibility

The present paper is concerned with optimal estimation of the 1st and 2nd order structural moments appearing in credibility formulas. In a recent paper De Vylder has treated the problem in the case of multinormal conditional distributions under quite restrictive assumptions. He minimizes, within a certain restricted class of unbiased estimators, the variance (or the sum of variances if the estimand is a matrix) and next replaces all structural moments (up to fourth order) in the solution by estimates based on the data. This paper is an attempt to simplify the method and extend it so as to make it applicable in more general situations. By suitable choice of a (sufficient) set of statistics and a suitable parametrization, the powerful theory of estimation in linear models can be employed, which makes cumbersome minimization procedures superfluous. The theory is applied to the cases with binomial. Poisson, compound Poisson, and multinormal conditional distributions. Some simulation studies have been performed to assess the performance of the estimators.