Unit Root Testing in Heteroscedastic Panels Using the Cauchy Estimator

The Cauchy estimator of an autoregressive root uses the sign of the first lag as instrumental variable. The resulting IV t-type statistic follows a standard normal limiting distribution under a unit root case even under unconditional heteroscedasticity, if the series to be tested has no deterministic trends. The standard normality of the Cauchy test is exploited to obtain a standard normal panel unit root test under cross-sectional dependence and time-varying volatility with an orthogonalization procedure. The article’s analysis of the joint N, T asymptotics of the test suggests that (1) N should be smaller than T and (2) its local power is competitive with other popular tests. To render the test applicable when N is comparable with, or larger than, T, shrinkage estimators of the involved covariance matrix are used. The finite-sample performance of the discussed procedures is found to be satisfactory.     

An LM-type test for idiosyncratic unit roots in the exact factor model with integrated factors

We consider an exact factor model with integrated factors and propose an LM-type test for unit roots in the idiosyncratic component. We show that, for a fixed number of panel individuals (N) and when the number of time points (T) tends to infinity, the limiting distribution of the LM-type statistic is a weighted sum of independent Chi-square variables with one degree of freedom, and when T tends to infinity followed by N tending to infinity, the limiting distribution is standard normal. The results should contribute to the challenging task of deriving likelihood-based unit-root tests in dynamic factor models.     

Testing for parameter constancy in the time series direction in panel data models

We propose tests for parameter constancy in the time series direction in panel data models. We construct a locally best invariant test based on Tanaka [Time series analysis: nonstationary and noninvertible distribution theory. New York: Wiley; 1996] and an asymptotically point optimal test based on Elliott and Müller [Efficient tests for general persistent time variation in regression coefficients. Rev Econ Stud. 2006;73:907–940]. We derive the limiting distributions of the test statistics as T→∞ while N is fixed, and calculate the critical values by applying numerical integration and response surface regression. Simulation results show that the proposed tests perform well if we apply them appropriately.     

Local power of panel unit root tests allowing for structural breaks

The asymptotic local power of least squares–based fixed-T panel unit root tests allowing for a structural break in their individual effects and/or incidental trends of the AR(1) panel data model is studied. Limiting distributions of these tests are derived under a sequence of local alternatives, and analytic expressions show how their means and variances are functions of the break date and the time dimension of the panel. The considered tests have nontrivial local power in a N^?1/2 neighborhood of unity when the panel data model includes individual intercepts. For panel data models with incidental trends, the power of the tests becomes trivial in this neighborhood. However, this problem does not always appear if the tests allow for serial correlation in the error term and completely vanishes in the presence of cross-section correlation. These results show that fixed-T tests have very different theoretical properties than their large-T counterparts. Monte Carlo experiments demonstrate the usefulness of the asymptotic theory in small samples.     

Common Correlated Effects Estimation of Dynamic Panels with Cross-Sectional Dependence

We derive inconsistency expressions for dynamic panel data estimators under error cross-sectional dependence generated by an unobserved common factor in both the fixed effect and the incidental trends case. We show that for a temporally dependent factor, the standard within groups (WG) estimator is inconsistent even as both N and T tend to infinity. Next we investigate the properties of the common correlated effects pooled (CCEP) estimator of Pesaran (2006) which eliminates the error cross-sectional dependence using cross-sectional averages of the data. In contrast to the static case, the CCEP estimator is only consistent when next to N also T tends to infinity. It is shown that for the most relevant parameter settings, the inconsistency of the CCEP estimator is larger than that of the infeasible WG estimator, which includes the common factors as regressors. Restricting the CCEP estimator results in a somewhat smaller inconsistency. The small sample properties of the various estimators are analyzed using Monte Carlo experiments. The simulation results suggest that the CCEP estimator can be used to estimate dynamic panel data models provided T is not too small. The size of N is of less importance.     

Testing for stationarity in large panels with cross-dependence,and US evidence on unit labor cost

A new stationarity test for heterogeneous panel data with large cross-sectional dimension is developed and used to examine a panel with growth rates of unit labor cost in the USA. The test allows for strong cross-unit dependence in the form of unbounded long-run correlation matrices, for which a simple parameterization is proposed. A KPSS-type distribution results asymptotically if letting T→∞ be followed by N→∞. Some evidence against stationarity (short memory) is found for the examined series.     

Asymptotic normal tests for integration in panels with cross-dependent units

The asymptotically normal, regression-based LM integration test is adapted for panels with correlated units. The N different units may be integrated of different (fractional) orders under the null hypothesis. The paper first reviews conditions under which the test statistic is asymptotically (as T→∞) normal in a single unit. Then we adopt the framework of seemingly unrelated regression [SUR] for cross-correlated panels, and discuss a panel test statistic based on the feasible generalized least squares [GLS] estimator, which follows a χ ²(N) distribution. Third, a more powerful statistic is obtained by working under the assumption of equal deviations from the respective null in all units. Fourth, feasible GLS requires inversion of sample covariance matrices typically imposing T>N; in addition we discuss alternative covariance matrix estimators for T<N. The usefulness of our results is assessed in Monte Carlo experimentation.     

Cross-Sectional Dependence in Panel Data Analysis

This article provides an overview of the existing literature on panel data models with error cross-sectional dependence (CSD). We distinguish between weak and strong CSD and link these concepts to the spatial and factor structure approaches. We consider estimation under strong and weak exogeneity of the regressors for both T fixed and T large cases. Available tests for CSD and methods for determining the number of factors are discussed in detail. The finite-sample properties of some estimators and statistics are investigated using Monte Carlo experiments.     

Weak Instrumental Variables Models for Longitudinal Data

This article considers the estimation and testing of a within-group two-stage least squares (TSLS) estimator for instruments with varying degrees of weakness in a longitudinal (panel) data model. We show that adding the repeated cross-sectional information into a regression model can improve the estimation in weak instruments. Moreover, the consistency and limiting distribution of the TSLS estimator are established when both N and T tend to infinity. Some asymptotically pivotal tests are extended to a longitudinal data model and their asymptotic properties are examined. A Monte Carlo experiment is conducted to evaluate the finite sample performance of the proposed estimators.     

Bootstrapping stochastic regression models under homoskedasticity: wild bootstrap vs. pairs bootstrap

We investigate by simulation how the wild bootstrap and pairs bootstrap perform in t and F tests of regression parameters in the stochastic regression model, where explanatory variables are stochastic and not given and there exists no heteroskedasticity. The wild bootstrap procedure due to Davidson and Flachaire [The wild bootstrap, tamed at last, Working paper, IER#1000, Queen's University, 2001] with restricted residuals works best but its dominance is not strong compared to the result of Flachaire [Bootstrapping heteroskedastic regression models: wild bootstrap vs. pairs bootstrap, Comput. Statist. Data Anal. 49 (2005), pp. 361–376] in the fixed regression model where explanatory variables are fixed and there exists heteroskedasticity.     

Double unit root tests for cross-sectionally dependent panel data

This paper proposes various double unit root tests for cross-sectionally dependent panel data. The cross-sectional correlation is handled by the projection method [P.C.B. Phillips and D. Sul, Dynamic panel estimation and homogeneity testing under cross section dependence, Econom. J. 6 (2003), pp. 217–259; H.R. Moon and B. Perron, Testing for a unit root in panels with dynamic factors, J. Econom. 122 (2004), pp. 81–126] or the subtraction method [J. Bai and S. Ng, A PANIC attack on unit roots and cointegration, Econometrica 72 (2004), pp. 1127–1177]. Pooling or averaging is applied to combine results from different panel units. Also, to estimate autoregressive parameters the ordinary least squares estimation [D.P. Hasza and W.A. Fuller, Estimation for autoregressive processes with unit roots, Ann. Stat. 7 (1979), pp. 1106–1120] or the symmetric estimation [D.L. Sen and D.A. Dickey, Symmetric test for second differencing in univariate time series, J. Bus. Econ. Stat. 5 (1987), pp. 463–473] are used, and to adjust mean functions the ordinary mean adjustment or the recursive mean adjustment are used. Combinations of different methods in defactoring to eliminate the cross-sectional dependency, integrating results from panel units, estimating the parameters, and adjusting mean functions yields various available tests for double unit roots in panel data. Simple asymptotic distributions of the proposed test statistics are derived, which can be used to find critical values of the test statistics.

We perform a Monte Carlo experiment to compare the performance of these tests and to suggest optimal tests for a given panel data. Application of the proposed tests to a real data, the yearly export panel data sets of several Latin–American countries for the past 50 years, illustrates the usefulness of the proposed tests for panel data, in that they reveal stronger evidence of double unit roots than the componentwise double unit root tests of Hasza and Fuller [Estimation for autoregressive processes with unit roots, Ann. Stat. 7 (1979), pp. 1106–1120] or Sen and Dickey [Symmetric test for second differencing in univariate time series, J. Bus. Econ. Stat. 5 (1987), pp. 463–473].     

Double filter instrumental variable estimation of panel data models with weakly exogenous variables

In this article, we propose instrumental variables (IV) and generalized method of moments (GMM) estimators for panel data models with weakly exogenous variables. The model is allowed to include heterogeneous time trends besides the standard fixed effects (FE). The proposed IV and GMM estimators are obtained by applying a forward filter to the model and a backward filter to the instruments in order to remove FE, thereby called the double filter IV and GMM estimators. We derive the asymptotic properties of the proposed estimators under fixed T and large N, and large T and large N asymptotics where N and T denote the dimensions of cross section and time series, respectively. It is shown that the proposed IV estimator has the same asymptotic distribution as the bias corrected FE estimator when both N and T are large. Monte Carlo simulation results reveal that the proposed estimator performs well in finite samples and outperforms the conventional IV/GMM estimators using instruments in levels in many cases.     

Wild-bootstrapped variance-ratio test for autocorrelation in the presence of heteroskedasticity

The Breusch–Godfrey LM test is one of the most popular tests for autocorrelation. However, it has been shown that the LM test may be erroneous when there exist heteroskedastic errors in a regression model. Recently, remedies have been proposed by Godfrey and Tremayne [9] and Shim et al. [21]. This paper suggests three wild-bootstrapped variance-ratio (WB-VR) tests for autocorrelation in the presence of heteroskedasticity. We show through a Monte Carlo simulation that our WB-VR tests have better small sample properties and are robust to the structure of heteroskedasticity.     

Robust Inference for Near-Unit Root Processes with Time-Varying Error Variances

The autoregressive Cauchy estimator uses the sign of the first lag as instrumental variable (IV); under independent and identically distributed (i.i.d.) errors, the resulting IV t-type statistic is known to have a standard normal limiting distribution in the unit root case. With unconditional heteroskedasticity, the ordinary least squares (OLS) t statistic is affected in the unit root case; but the paper shows that, by using some nonlinear transformation behaving asymptotically like the sign as instrument, limiting normality of the IV t-type statistic is maintained when the series to be tested has no deterministic trends. Neither estimation of the so-called variance profile nor bootstrap procedures are required to this end. The Cauchy unit root test has power in the same 1/T neighborhoods as the usual unit root tests, also for a wide range of magnitudes for the initial value. It is furthermore shown to be competitive with other, bootstrap-based, robust tests. When the series exhibit a linear trend, however, the null distribution of the Cauchy test for a unit root becomes nonstandard, reminiscent of the Dickey-Fuller distribution. In this case, inference robust to nonstationary volatility is obtained via the wild bootstrap.     

The Likelihood Ratio Test with the Box–Cox Transformation for the Normal Mixture Problem: Power and Sample Size Study

Abstract

Through simulation and regression, we study the alternative distribution of the likelihood ratio test in which the null hypothesis postulates that the data are from a normal distribution after a restricted Box–Cox transformation and the alternative hypothesis postulates that they are from a mixture of two normals after a restricted (possibly different) Box–Cox transformation. The number of observations in the sample is called N. The standardized distance between components (after transformation) is D = (μ₂ ? μ₁)/σ, where μ₁ and μ₂ are the component means and σ² is their common variance. One component contains the fraction π of observed, and the other 1 ? π. The simulation results demonstrate a dependence of power on the mixing proportion, with power decreasing as the mixing proportion differs from 0.5. The alternative distribution appears to be a non-central chi-squared with approximately 2.48 + 10N ^?0.75 degrees of freedom and non-centrality parameter 0.174N(D ? 1.4)² × [π(1 ? π)]. At least 900 observations are needed to have power 95% for a 5% test when D = 2. For fixed values of D, power, and significance level, substantially more observations are necessary when π ≥ 0.90 or π ≤ 0.10. We give the estimated powers for the alternatives studied and a table of sample sizes needed for 50%, 80%, 90%, and 95% power.     

The accuracy of normal approximation in a heterogeneous panel data unit root test

Tests for unit roots in panel data have become very popular. Two attractive features of panel data unit root tests are the increased power compared to time-series tests, and the often well-behaved limiting distributions of the tests. In this paper we apply Monte Carlo simulations to investigate how well the normal approximation works for a heterogeneous panel data unit root test when there are only a few cross sections in the sample. We find that the normal approximation, which should be valid for large numbers of cross-sectional units, works well, at conventional significance levels, even when the number of cross sections is as small as two. This finding is valuable for the applied researcher since critical values will be easy to obtain and p-values will be readily available.     

Heteroskedasticity Robust Panel Unit Root Testing Under Variance Breaks in Pooled Regressions

Noting that many economic variables display occasional shifts in their second order moments, we investigate the performance of homogenous panel unit root tests in the presence of permanent volatility shifts. It is shown that in this case the test statistic proposed by Herwartz and Siedenburg (2008 Herwartz, H., Siedenburg, F. (2008). Homogenous panel unit root tests under cross-sectional dependence: Finite sample modifications and the wild bootstrap. Computational Statistics and Data Analysis 53(1):137–150.[Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]) is asymptotically standard Gaussian. By means of a simulation study we illustrate the performance of first and second generation panel unit root tests and undertake a more detailed comparison of the test in Herwartz and Siedenburg (2008 Herwartz, H., Siedenburg, F. (2008). Homogenous panel unit root tests under cross-sectional dependence: Finite sample modifications and the wild bootstrap. Computational Statistics and Data Analysis 53(1):137–150.[Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]) and its heteroskedasticity consistent Cauchy counterpart introduced in Demetrescu and Hanck (2012a Demetrescu, M., Hanck, C. (2012a). A simple nonstationary-volatility robust panel unit root test. Economics Letters 117(2):10–13.[Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]). As an empirical illustration, we reassess evidence on the Fisher hypothesis with data from nine countries over the period 1961Q2–2011Q2. Empirical evidence supports panel stationarity of the real interest rate for the entire subperiod. With regard to the most recent two decades, the test results cast doubts on market integration, since the real interest rate is diagnosed nonstationary.     

Structural breaks in panel data: Large number of panels and short length time series

The detection of (structural) breaks or the so called change point problem has drawn increasing attention from the theoretical, applied economic and financial fields. Much of the existing research concentrates on the detection of change points and asymptotic properties of their estimators in panels when N, the number of panels, as well as T, the number of observations in each panel are large. In this paper we pursue a different approach, i.e., we consider the asymptotic properties when N→∞ while keeping T fixed. This situation is typically related to large (firm-level) data containing financial information about an immense number of firms/stocks across a limited number of years/quarters/months. We propose a general approach for testing for break(s) in this setup. In particular, we obtain the asymptotic behavior of test statistics. We also propose a wild bootstrap procedure that could be used to generate the critical values of the test statistics. The theoretical approach is supplemented by numerous simulations and by an empirical illustration. We demonstrate that the testing procedure works well in the framework of the four factors CAPM model. In particular, we estimate the breaks in the monthly returns of US mutual funds during the period January 2006 to February 2010 which covers the subprime crises.     

Lag Length Selection for Unit Root Tests in the Presence of Nonstationary Volatility

A number of recent papers have focused on the problem of testing for a unit root in the case where the driving shocks may be unconditionally heteroskedastic. These papers have, however, taken the lag length in the unit root test regression to be a deterministic function of the sample size, rather than data-determined, the latter being standard empirical practice. We investigate the finite sample impact of unconditional heteroskedasticity on conventional data-dependent lag selection methods in augmented Dickey–Fuller type regressions and propose new lag selection criteria which allow for unconditional heteroskedasticity. Standard lag selection methods are shown to have a tendency to over-fit the lag order under heteroskedasticity, resulting in significant power losses in the (wild bootstrap implementation of the) augmented Dickey–Fuller tests under the alternative. The proposed new lag selection criteria are shown to avoid this problem yet deliver unit root tests with almost identical finite sample properties as the corresponding tests based on conventional lag selection when the shocks are homoskedastic.     

Some Properties of Order Statistics When the Sample Size Is Random

ABSTRACT

The study of r-out-of-n systems is of utmost importance in reliability theory. In this note, we study closure of different partial orders under the formation of r-out-of-N and (N ? s)-out-of-N systems when the number of components N, forming the system, is a random variable having support {k, k + 1,…}, where k is a fixed positive integer, r ∈ {1,…, k} and s ∈ {0, 1,…, k ? 1}. This generalizes quite a few results already known in the literature. We also study the closure of different partial orders when two systems are formed out of different random number of components.