A note on the consistency of the Narain-Horvitz-Thompson estimator

Abstract

For the Narain-Horvitz-Thompson estimator to have usual asymptotic properties such as consistency, some conditions on the sampling design and on the variable of interest are needed. Cardot et al. (2010) give some sufficient conditions for the mean square consistency, but one of them is usually difficult to prove or does not hold for some unequal probability sampling designs. We propose alternative conditions for the mean square consistency of the Narain-Horvitz-Thompson estimator. A specific result is also proved in case when a martingale sampling algorithm is used, which implies consistency under a fast algorithm for the cube method.