Automatic calculation of the sensitivity of Bayesian fisheries models to informative priors
The derivatives of Bayes estimators, with respect to changes in hyper-parameters of the prior density, are posterior covariances. Hence, these derivatives can be readily estimated from a posterior sample and the calculation is shown to be especially straightforward for parameters having a marginal prior that is of exponential family form. Three examples are given. The first fits a Ricker curve to stockrecruit data and, for several important management parameters, examines the sensitivity of the Bayes estimates to the informative log-normal priors placed on the maximum annual reproductive rate and density-dependent compensation parameters. Using the WinBUGS software, it is demonstrated that these derivatives can easily be estimated by a minor addition to the program code. The utility of the estimated sensitivities is examined by refitting the Ricker model using a range of different priors. The second example revisits a hierarchical model that was used to perform a meta-stock assessment on several US West Coast rockfish (Sebastes spp.) stocks, and examines the sensitivity of the Bayes estimate of bulk catchability to the hyper-prior. The final example looks at an example from the literature and uses summary statistics provided therein to determine the sensitivity of model parameters to their prior means.