Fully observed INAR(1) processes

The innovations of an INAR(1) process (integer-valued autoregressive) are usually assumed to be unobservable. There are, however, situations in practice, where also the innovations can be uncovered, i.e. where we are concerned with a fully observed INAR(1) process. We analyze stochastic properties of such a fully observed INAR(1) process and explore the relation between the INAR(1) model and certain metapopulation models. We show how the additional knowledge about the innovations can be used for parameter estimation, for model diagnostics, and for forecasting. Our findings are illustrated with two real-data examples.