Abstract
We recall Godambe's theorem on the nonexistence of an umvue in finite population sampling for estimation of a population total and that the existence of a uniformly minimum mse estimator without any further conditions is not possible. Assuming model-unbiasedness with respect to a well known super population model, we give an alternative derivation of Royall's optimum estimator. Finally, the role of design unbiasedness criterion is briefly discussed.
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Acknowledgment
The author thanks Prof. Bikas Sinha for his helpful comments and discussions and an associate editor and referees for their useful suggestions and remarks.