Bayes tests of independence for contingency tables from small areas

In this paper we study pooling effects in Bayesian testing procedures of independence for contingency tables from small areas. In small area estimation setup, we typically use a hierarchical Bayesian model for borrowing strength across small areas. This techniques of borrowing strength in small area estimation is used to construct a Bayes test of independence for contingency tables from small areas. In specific, we consider the methods of direct or indirect pooling in multinomial models through Dirichlet priors. We use the Bayes factor (or equivalently the ratio of the marginal likelihoods) to construct the Bayes test, and the marginal density is obtained by integrating the joint density function over all parameters. The Bayes test is computed by performing a Monte Carlo integration based on the method proposed by Nandram and Kim (2002).