This paper deals with a scalar I(d) process
{yj}, where the integration order
d is any real number. Under this setting, we first explore
asymptotic properties of various statistics associated with
{yj}, assuming that d is known
and is greater than or equal to ½. Note that
{yj} becomes stationary when
d < ½, whose case is not our concern here. It turns
out that the case of d = ½ needs a separate treatment
from d > ½. We then consider, under the normality
assumption, testing and estimation for d, allowing for any
value of d. The tests suggested here are asymptotically
uniformly most powerful invariant, whereas the maximum likelihood
estimator is asymptotically efficient. The asymptotic theory for
these results will not assume normality. Unlike in the usual unit
root problem based on autoregressive models, standard asymptotic
results hold for test statistics and estimators, where d
need not be restricted to d ≥ ½. Simulation
experiments are conducted to examine the finite sample performance
of both the tests and estimators.