e ridge regression-type (Hoerl and Kennard, 1970) and Liu-type (Liu, 1993) estimators are consistently attractive shrinkage methods to reduce the effects of multicollinearity for both linear and nonlinear regression models. is paper proposes a new estimator to solve the multicollinearity problem for the linear regression model. eory and simulation results show that, under some conditions, it performs better than both Liu and ridge regression estimators in the smaller MSE sense. Two real-life (chemical and economic) data are analyzed to illustrate the findings of the paper.

The Linear regression model is one of the most widely used models in different fields of study. The most popularly used estimation technique is the ordinary least squares estimator. The technique becomes unstable and gives misleading result in the presence of multicollinearity. The ridge regression estimator has been widely accepted as an alternative method to combat the problem of multicollinearity. In this study, a modified ridge‐type estimator is suggested by modifying the ridge regression estimator. A Monte Carlo simulation study and real‐life application were conducted to compare the performance of this estimator and some other existing estimators. The results of both simulation study and real‐life application show that the proposed estimator outperforms other competing estimator.

COVID-19 remains a major pandemic currently threatening all the countries of the world. In Nigeria, there were 1, 932 COVID-19 confirmed cases, 319 discharged cases and 58 deaths as of 30th April 2020. This paper, therefore, subjected the daily cumulative reported COVID-19 cases of these three variables to nine (9) curve estimation statistical models in simple, quadratic, cubic, and quartic forms. It further identified the best of the thirty-six (36) models and used the same for prediction and forecasting purposes. The data collected by the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control for sixty-four (64) days, two (2) months and three (3), were daily monitored and eventually analyzed. We identified the best models to be Quartic Linear Regression Model with an autocorrelated error of order 1 (AR(1)); and found the Ordinary Least Squares, Cochrane Orcutt, Hildreth-Lu, and Prais-Winsten and Least Absolute Deviation (LAD) estimators useful to estimate the models' parameters. Consequently, we recommended the daily cumulative forecast values of the LAD estimator for May and June 2020 with a 99% confidence level. The forecast values are alarming, and so, the Nigerian Government needs to hastily review her activities and interventions towards COVID-19 to provide some tactical and robust structures and measures to avert these challenges.

Ridge parameter estimation techniques under the influence of multicollinearity in Linear regression model were reviewed and classified into different forms and various types. The different forms are Fixed Maximum (FM), Varying Maximum (VM), Arithmetic Mean (AM), Geometric Mean (GM), Harmonic Mean (HM) and Median (M) and the various types are Original (O), Reciprocal (R), Square Root (SR) and Reciprocal of Square Root (RSR). These classifications resulted into proposing some other techniques of Ridge parameter estimation. Investigation of the existing and proposed ones were done by conducting 1000 Monte-Carlo experiments under five (5) levels of multicollinearity (ρ = 0.8, 0.9, 0.95, 0.99, 0.999), three (3) levels of error variance (σ 2 = 0.25, 1, 25) and five levels of sample size (n = 10, 20, 30, 40, 50). The relative efficiency (RF ≤ 0.75) of the techniques resulting from the ratio of their mean square error and that of the ordinary least square was used to compare the techniques. Results show that the proposed techniques perform better than the existing ones in some situations; and that the best technique is generally the ridge parameter in the form of Harmonic Mean, Fixed Maximum and Varying Maximum in their Original and Square Root types.

The maximum likelihood estimator (MLE) suffers from the instability problem in the presence of multicollinearity for a Poisson regression model (PRM). In this study, we propose a new estimator with some biasing parameters to estimate the regression coefficients for the PRM when there is multicollinearity problem. Some simulation experiments are conducted to compare the estimators' performance by using the mean squared error (MSE) criterion. For illustration purposes, aircraft damage data has been analyzed. The simulation results and the real-life application evidenced that the proposed estimator performs better than the rest of the estimators.

The coronavirus outbreak is the most notable world crisis since the Second World War. The pandemic that originated from Wuhan, China in late 2019 has affected all the nations of the world and triggered a global economic crisis whose impact will be felt for years to come. This necessitates the need to monitor and predict COVID-19 prevalence for adequate control. The linear regression models are prominent tools in predicting the impact of certain factors on COVID-19 outbreak and taking the necessary measures to respond to this crisis. The data was extracted from the NCDC website and spanned from March 31, 2020 to May 29, 2020. In this study, we adopted the ordinary least squares estimator to measure the impact of travelling history and contacts on the spread of COVID-19 in Nigeria and made a prediction. The model was conducted before and after travel restriction was enforced by the Federal government of Nigeria. The fitted model fitted well to the dataset and was free of any violation based on the diagnostic checks conducted. The results show that the government made a right decision in enforcing travelling restriction because we observed that travelling history and contacts made increases the chances of people being infected with COVID-19 by 85% and 88% respectively. This prediction of COVID-19 shows that the government should ensure that most travelling agency should have better precautions and preparations in place before re-opening.

The literature has shown that ordinary least squares estimator (OLSE) is not best when the explanatory variables are related, that is, when multicollinearity is present. This estimator becomes unstable and gives a misleading conclusion. In this study, a modified new two-parameter estimator based on prior information for the vector of parameters is proposed to circumvent the problem of multicollinearity. This new estimator includes the special cases of the ordinary least squares estimator (OLSE), the ridge estimator (RRE), the Liu estimator (LE), the modified ridge estimator (MRE), and the modified Liu estimator (MLE). Furthermore, the superiority of the new estimator over OLSE, RRE, LE, MRE, MLE, and the two-parameter estimator proposed by Ozkale and Kaciranlar (2007) was obtained by using the mean squared error matrix criterion. In conclusion, a numerical example and a simulation study were conducted to illustrate the theoretical results.

The world at large has been confronted with several disease outbreak which has posed and still posing a serious menace to public health globally. Recently, COVID-19 a new kind of coronavirus emerge from Wuhan city in China and was declared a pandemic by the World Health Organization. There has been a reported case of about 8622985 with global death of 457,355 as of 15.05 GMT, June 19, 2020. South-Africa, Egypt, Nigeria and Ghana are the most affected African countries with this outbreak. Thus, there is a need to monitor and predict COVID-19 prevalence in this region for effective control and management. Different statistical tools and time series model such as the linear regression model and autoregressive integrated moving average (ARIMA) models have been applied for disease prevalence/incidence prediction in different diseases outbreak. However, in this study, we adopted the ARIMA model to forecast the trend of COVID-19 prevalence in the aforementioned African countries. The datasets examined in this analysis spanned from February 21, 2020, to June 16, 2020, and was extracted from the World Health Organization website. ARIMA models with minimum Akaike information criterion correction (AICc) and statistically significant parameters were selected as the best models. Accordingly, the ARIMA (0,2,3), ARIMA (0,1,1), ARIMA (3,1,0) and ARIMA (0,1,2) models were chosen as the best models for SA, Nigeria, and Ghana and Egypt, respectively. Forecasting was made based on the best models. It is noteworthy to claim that the ARIMA models are appropriate for predicting the prevalence of COVID-19. We noticed a form of exponential growth in the trend of this virus in Africa in the days to come. Thus, the government and health authorities should pay attention to the pattern of COVID-19 in Africa. Necessary plans and precautions should be put in place to curb this pandemic in Africa.