Improved estimation under Pitman's measure of closeness

Stein-type and Brown-type estimators are constructed for general families of distributions which improve in the sense of Pitman closeness on the closest (in a class) estimator of a parameter. The results concern mainly scale parameters but a brief discussion on improved estimation of location parameters is also included. The loss is a general continuous and strictly bowl shaped function, and the improved estimators presented do not depend on it, i.e., uniform domination is established with respect to the loss. The normal and inverse Gaussian distributions are used as illustrative examples. This work unifies and extends previous relevant results available in the literature.