Let X0 be a square matrix (complex or otherwise) and u0 a (normalized) eigenvector associated with an eigenvalue λo of X0, so that the triple (X0, u0, λ0) satisfies the equations Xu = λu, . We investigate the conditions under which unique differentiable functions λ(X) and u(X) exist in a neighborhood of X0 satisfying λ(X0) = λO, u(X0) = u0, Xu = λu, and . We obtain the first and second derivatives of λ(X) and the first derivative of u(X). Two alternative expressions for the first derivative of λ(X) are also presented.

The asymptotic properties of parameter estimators which are based on a model that has been selected by a model selection procedure are investigated. In particular, the asymptotic distribution is derived and the effects of the model selection process on subsequent inference are illustrated.

This paper develops new estimation and inference procedures for dynamic panel data models with fixed effects and incidental trends. A simple consistent GMM estimation method is proposed that avoids the weak moment condition problem that is known to affect conventional GMM estimation when the autoregressive coefficient (ρ) is near unity. In both panel and time series cases, the estimator has standard Gaussian asymptotics for all values of ρ ∈ (−1, 1] irrespective of how the composite cross-section and time series sample sizes pass to infinity. Simulations reveal that the estimator has little bias even in very small samples. The approach is applied to panel unit root testing.

This paper proposes a new testing procedure to detect the presence of a cointegrating relationship that follows a globally stationary smooth transition process. In the context of nonlinear smooth transition error correction models (ECMs) we provide two simple operational versions of the tests. First, we obtain the associated nonlinear ECM-based tests. Second, we derive the nonlinear analogue of the residual-based test for cointegration in linear models. We derive the asymptotic distributions of the proposed tests. Monte Carlo simulation exercises confirm that our proposed tests have much better power than the linear counterparts against the alternative of a globally stationary nonlinear cointegrating process. In an application to the price-dividend relationship, our test is able to find cointegration, whereas the linear-based tests fail to do so.We are grateful to an associate editor, two anonymous referees, Richard Baillie, In Choi, Atanas Christev, Hira Koul, Richard Harris, Cheng Hsiao, Changjin Kim, Joon Park, Peter Schmidt, Yoonjae Whang, Jeff Wooldridge, and seminar participants at University of Edinburgh, Heriot-Watt University, Korea University, University of Leeds, Michigan State University, University of Newcastle, and Sungkunkwan University for their helpful comments. Partial financial support from the ESRC (grant R000223399) is gratefully acknowledged. The usual disclaimer applies.

In this paper, test statistics for detecting a break at an unknown date in the trend function of a dynamic univariate time series are proposed. The tests are based on the mean and exponential statistics of Andrews and Ploberger (1994, Econometrica 62, 1383–1414) and the supremum statistic of Andrews (1993, Econometrica 61, 821–856). Their results are extended to allow trending and unit root regressors. Asymptotic results are derived for both I(0) and I(1) errors. When the errors are highly persistent and it is not known which asymptotic theory (I(0) or I(1)) provides a better approximation, a conservative approach based on nearly integrated asymptotics is provided. Power of the mean statistic is shown to be nonmonotonic with respect to the break magnitude and is dominated by the exponential and supremum statistics. Versions of the tests applicable to first differences of the data are also proposed. The tests are applied to some macroeconomic time series, and the null hypothesis of a stable trend function is rejected in many cases.

Recently, Shimotsu and Phillips (2005, Annals of Statistics 33, 1890–1933) developed a new semiparametric estimator, the exact local Whittle (ELW) estimator, of the memory parameter (d) in fractionally integrated processes. The ELW estimator has been shown to be consistent, and it has the same asymptotic distribution for all values of d, if the optimization covers an interval of width less than 9/2 and the mean of the process is known. With the intent to provide a semiparametric estimator suitable for economic data, we extend the ELW estimator so that it accommodates an unknown mean and a polynomial time trend. We show that the two-step ELW estimator, which is based on a modified ELW objective function using a tapered local Whittle estimator in the first stage, has an asymptotic distribution for (or when the data have a polynomial trend). Our simulation study illustrates that the two-step ELW estimator inherits the desirable properties of the ELW estimator.

Unit root tests for time series with level shifts of general form are considered when the timing of the shift is unknown. It is proposed to estimate the nuisance parameters of the data generation process including the shift date in a first step and apply standard unit root tests to the residuals. The estimation of the nuisance parameters is done in such a way that the unit root tests on the residuals have the same limiting distributions as for the case of a known break date. Simulations are performed to investigate the small sample properties of the tests, and empirical examples are discussed to illustrate the procedure.

Consistency and asymptotic normality are established for the highly applied quasi-maximum likelihood estimator in the GARCH(1,1) model. Contrary to existing literature we allow the parameters to be in the region where no stationary version of the process exists. This has the important implication that the likelihood-based estimator for the GARCH parameters is consistent and asymptotically normal in the entire parameter region including both stationary and explosive behavior. In particular, there is no “knife edge result like the unit root case” as hypothesized in Lumsdaine (1996, Econometrica 64, 575–596).Anders Rahbek is grateful for support from the Danish Social Sciences Research Council, the Centre for Analytical Finance (CAF), and the EU network DYNSTOCH. Both authors thank the two anonymous referees and the editor for highly valuable and detailed comments that have, we believe, led to a much improved version of the paper, both in terms of the econometric theory and of the presentation.

An effective way to control for cross-section correlation when conducting a panel unit root test is to remove the common factors from the data. However, there remain many ways to use the defactored residuals to construct a test. In this paper, we use the panel analysis of nonstationarity in idiosyncratic and common components (PANIC) residuals to form two new tests. One estimates the pooled autoregressive coefficient, and one simply uses a sample moment. We establish their large-sample properties using a joint limit theory. We find that when the pooled autoregressive root is estimated using data detrended by least squares, the tests have no power. This result holds regardless of how the data are defactored. All PANIC-based pooled tests have nontrivial power because of the way the linear trend is removed.

The asymptotic variance matrix of the quantile regression estimator depends on the density of the error. For both deterministic and random regressors, the bootstrap distribution is shown to converge weakly to the limit distribution of the quantile regression estimator in probability. Thus, the confidence intervals constructed by the bootstrap percentile method have asymptotically correct coverage probabilities.

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.

In this paper we develop full information methods for estimating the parameters of a system of simultaneous equations with error component structure and establish relationships between the various structural estimators.

Least squares estimation has casually been dismissed as an inconsistent estimation method for mixed regressive, spatial autoregressive models with or without spatial correlated disturbances. Although this statement is correct for a wide class of models, we show that, in economic spatial environments where each unit can be influenced aggregately by a significant portion of units in the population, least squares estimators can be consistent. Indeed, they can even be asymptotically efficient relative to some other estimators. Their computations are easier than alternative instrumental variables and maximum likelihood approaches.

A kernel weighted version of the standard realized integrated volatility estimator is proposed. By different choices of the kernel and bandwidth, the measure allows us to focus on specific characteristics of the volatility process. In particular, as the bandwidth vanishes, an estimator of the realized spot volatility is obtained. We denote this the filtered spot volatility. We show consistency and asymptotic normality of the kernel smoothed realized volatility and the filtered spot volatility. We consider boundary issues and propose two methods to handle these. The choice of bandwidth is discussed and data-driven selection methods are proposed. A simulation study examines the finite sample properties of the estimators.

A Bayesian analysis of a nonidentified model is always possible if a proper prior on all the parameters is specified. There is, however, no Bayesian free lunch. The “price” is that there exist quantities about which the data are uninformative, i.e., their marginal prior and posterior distributions are identical. In the case of improper priors the analysis is problematic—resulting posteriors can be improper. This study investigates both proper and improper cases through a series of examples.

We investigate vector autoregressive processes and find the condition under which the processes are I(2). A representation theorem forsuch processes is proved and the interpretation of the AR model as an error correction model is discussed.

We study some methods of combining procedures for forecasting a continuous random variable. Statistical risk bounds under the square error loss are obtained under distributional assumptions on the future given the current outside information and the past observations. The risk bounds show that the combined forecast automatically achieves the best performance among the candidate procedures up to a constant factor and an additive penalty term. In terms of the rate of convergence, the combined forecast performs as well as if the best candidate forecasting procedure were known in advance.

Empirical studies suggest that combining procedures can sometimes improve forecasting accuracy over the original procedures. Risk bounds are derived to theoretically quantify the potential gain and price of linearly combining forecasts for improvement. The result supports the empirical finding that it is not automatically a good idea to combine forecasts. Indiscriminate combining can degrade performance dramatically as a result of the large variability in estimating the best combining weights. An automated combining method is shown in theory to achieve a balance between the potential gain and the complexity penalty (the price of combining), to take advantage (if any) of sparse combining, and to maintain the best performance (in rate) among the candidate forecasting procedures if linear or sparse combining does not help.This research was supported by U.S. National Security Agency Grant MDA9049910060 and U.S. National Science Foundation CAREER Grant DMS0094323. The author sincerely thanks three reviewers and Poti Giannakouros for their very valuable comments, which led to a substantial improvement of the paper.

We analyze fast procedures for conducting Monte Carlo experiments involving bootstrap estimators, providing formal results establishing the properties of these methods under general conditions.

This paper presents a number of consistency results for nonparametric kernel estimators of density and regression functions and their derivatives. These results are particularly useful in semiparametric estimation and testing problems that rely on preliminary nonparametric estimators, as in Andrews (1994, Econometrica 62, 43–72). The results allow for near-epoch dependent, nonidentically distributed random variables, data-dependent bandwidth sequences, preliminary estimation of parameters (e.g., nonparametric regression based on residuals), and nonparametric regression on index functions.

In this paper, we propose a nonparametric identification and estimation procedure for an ltd diffusion process based on discrete sampling observations. The nonparametric kernel estimator for the diffusion function developed in this paper deals with general ltd diffusion processes and avoids any functional form specification for either the drift function or the diffusion function. It is shown that under certain regularity conditions the nonparametric diffusion function estimator is pointwise consistent and asymptotically follows a normal mixture distribution. Under stronger conditions, a consistent nonparametric estimator of the drift function is also derived based on the diffusion function estimator and the marginal density of the process. An application of the nonparametric technique to a short-term interest rate model involving Canadian daily 3-month treasury bill rates is also undertaken. The estimation results provide evidence for rejecting the common parametric or semiparametric specifications for both the drift and diffusion functions.