TY - JOUR T1 - Bayesian Hierarchical Models with Conjugate Full-Conditional Distributions for Dependent Data from the Natural Exponential Family JF - Journal of the American Statistical Association - T&M. Y1 - 2016 A1 - Bradley, J.R. A1 - Holan, S.H. A1 - Wikle, C.K. AB - We introduce a Bayesian approach for analyzing (possibly) high-dimensional dependent data that are distributed according to a member from the natural exponential family of distributions. This problem requires extensive methodological advancements, as jointly modeling high-dimensional dependent data leads to the so-called "big n problem." The computational complexity of the "big n problem" is further exacerbated when allowing for non-Gaussian data models, as is the case here. Thus, we develop new computationally efficient distribution theory for this setting. In particular, we introduce something we call the "conjugate multivariate distribution," which is motivated by the univariate distribution introduced in Diaconis and Ylvisaker (1979). Furthermore, we provide substantial theoretical and methodological development including: results regarding conditional distributions, an asymptotic relationship with the multivariate normal distribution, conjugate prior distributions, and full-conditional distributions for a Gibbs sampler. The results in this manuscript are extremely general, and can be adapted to many different settings. We demonstrate the proposed methodology through simulated examples and analyses based on estimates obtained from the US Census Bureaus' American Community Survey (ACS). UR - https://arxiv.org/abs/1701.07506 ER -