Role of stylized features in constructing better estimators

This article discusses the role played by stylized features of financial time series in constructing better estimators for the model parameters. We study in detail one such estimator for the transition probabilities of a simple regime switching model. The estimator is based on the squared autocovariances of the time series, which has been discussed in several empirical studies of economic and financial time series. The effectiveness of this estimator in improving the estimation accuracy is investigated, using both finite sample and asymptotic computations. We also report simulation results to confirm our findings and to extend our conclusions over a bigger region of the parameter space.     

On a mixture autoregressive model

We generalize the Gaussian mixture transition distribution (GMTD) model introduced by Le and co-workers to the mixture autoregressive (MAR) model for the modelling of non-linear time series. The models consist of a mixture of K stationary or non-stationary AR components. The advantages of the MAR model over the GMTD model include a more full range of shape changing predictive distributions and the ability to handle cycles and conditional heteroscedasticity in the time series. The stationarity conditions and autocorrelation function are derived. The estimation is easily done via a simple EM algorithm and the model selection problem is addressed. The shape changing feature of the conditional distributions makes these models capable of modelling time series with multimodal conditional distributions and with heteroscedasticity. The models are applied to two real data sets and compared with other competing models. The MAR models appear to capture features of the data better than other competing models do.     

Hidden Markov model for discrete circular–linear wind data time series

ABSTRACT

In this work, we deal with a bivariate time series of wind speed and direction. Our observed data have peculiar features, such as informative missing values, non-reliable measures under a specific condition and interval-censored data, that we take into account in the model specification. We analyse the time series with a non-parametric Bayesian hidden Markov model, introducing a new emission distribution, suitable to model our data, based on the invariant wrapped Poisson, the Poisson and the hurdle density. The model is estimated on simulated datasets and on the real data example that motivated this work.     

Multivariate non-linear time series modelling of exposure and risk in road safety research

Summary.  A multivariate non-linear time series model for road safety data is presented. The model is applied in a case-study into the development of a yearly time series of numbers of fatal accidents (inside and outside urban areas) and numbers of kilometres driven by motor vehicles in the Netherlands between 1961 and 2000. The model accounts for missing entries in the disaggregated numbers of kilometres driven although the aggregated numbers are observed throughout. We consider a multivariate non-linear time series model for the analysis of these data. The model consists of dynamic unobserved factors for exposure and risk that are related in a non-linear way to the number of fatal accidents. The multivariate dimension of the model is due to its inclusion of multiple time series for inside and outside urban areas. Approximate maximum likelihood methods based on the extended Kalman filter are utilized for the estimation of unknown parameters. The latent factors are estimated by extended smoothing methods. It is concluded that the salient features of the observed time series are captured by the model in a satisfactory way.     

A class of models for aggregated traffic volume time series

Summary. The development of time series models for traffic volume data constitutes an important step in constructing automated tools for the management of computing infrastructure resources. We analyse two traffic volume time series: one is the volume of hard disc activity, aggregated into half-hour periods, measured on a workstation, and the other is the volume of Internet requests made to a workstation. Both of these time series exhibit features that are typical of network traffic data, namely strong seasonal components and highly non-Gaussian distributions. For these time series, a particular class of non-linear state space models is proposed, and practical techniques for model fitting and forecasting are demonstrated.     

On time-irreversibility and other non-linear features in time series

Time-irreversibility, asymmetry of the distribution, and the occurrence of sudden bursts are considered, amongst others, as non-linear features in time series modeling. The implication is often made that time series showing these features must be analyzed using non-linear models. In contrast, this paper shows that time-irreversible asymmetric time series showing certain types of sudden bursts may be generated by linear models with adequate input sequences. Thus some non-linear time series features may be caused by the pattern in the input sequence rather than by non-linearity in the model. Examples are considered to illustrate the situation.     

Time Series Properties of the Class of Generalized First-Order Autoregressive Processes with Moving Average Errors

A new class of time series models known as Generalized Autoregressive of order one with first-order moving average errors has been introduced in order to reveal some hidden features of certain time series data. The variance and autocovariance of the process is derived in order to study the behaviour of the process. It is shown that in special cases these new results reduce to the standard ARMA results. Estimation of parameters based on the Whittle procedure is discussed. We illustrate the use of this class of model by using two examples.     

Useful models for time series of counts or simply wrong ones?

There has been a considerable and growing interest in low integer-valued time series data leading to a diversification of modelling approaches. In addition to static regression models, both observation-driven and parameter-driven models are considered here. We compare and contrast a variety of time series models for counts using two very different data sets as a testbed. A range of diagnostic devices is employed to help inform model adequacy. Special attention is paid to dynamic structure and underlying distributional assumptions including associated dispersion properties. Competing models show attractive features, but overall no one modelling approach is seen to dominate.     

Moments of Mixture Periodic Autoregressive Models

This article deals with the study of some properties of a mixture periodically correlated autoregressive (MPAR _S ) time series model, which extends the mixture time invariant parameter autoregressive (MAR) model, that has recently received a considerable interest from many economic time series analysts, to mixture periodic parameter autoregressive model. The aim behind this extension is to make the model able to capture, in addition to all features captured by the classical MAR model, the periodicity feature exhibited by the autocovariance structure of many encountered financial and environmental time series with eventual multimodal distributions. Our main contribution here is obtaining of the second moment periodically stationary condition for a MPAR _S (K; 2,…, 2) model, furthermore the closed-form of the second moment is obtained.     

Statistical analysis of a class of factor time series models

For a class of factor time series models, which is called a multivariate time series variance component (MTV) models, we consider the problem of testing whether an observed time series belongs to this class. We propose the test statistic, and derive its symptotic null distribution. Asymptotic optimality of the proposed test is discussed in view of the local asymptotic normality. Also, numerical evaluation of the local power illuminates some interesting features of the test.     

Multichannel electroencephalographic analyses via dynamic regression models with time-varying lag–lead structure

Multiple time series of scalp electrical potential activity are generated routinely in electroencephalographic (EEG) studies. Such recordings provide important non-invasive data about brain function in human neuropsychiatric disorders. Analyses of EEG traces aim to isolate characteristics of their spatiotemporal dynamics that may be useful in diagnosis, or may improve the understanding of the underlying neurophysiology or may improve treatment through identifying predictors and indicators of clinical outcomes. We discuss the development and application of non-stationary time series models for multiple EEG series generated from individual subjects in a clinical neuropsychiatric setting. The subjects are depressed patients experiencing generalized tonic–clonic seizures elicited by electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) as antidepressant treatment. Two varieties of models—dynamic latent factor models and dynamic regression models—are introduced and studied. We discuss model motivation and form, and aspects of statistical analysis including parameter identifiability, posterior inference and implementation of these models via Markov chain Monte Carlo techniques. In an application to the analysis of a typical set of 19 EEG series recorded during an ECT seizure at different locations over a patient's scalp, these models reveal time-varying features across the series that are strongly related to the placement of the electrodes. We illustrate various model outputs, the exploration of such time-varying spatial structure and its relevance in the ECT study, and in basic EEG research in general.     

Graphical Techniques for Selecting Explanatory Variables for Time Series Data

Bayesian model building techniques are developed for data with a strong time series structure and possibly exogenous explanatory variables that have strong explanatory and predictive power. The emphasis is on finding whether there are any explanatory variables that might be used for modelling if the data have a strong time series structure that should also be included. We use a time series model that is linear in past observations and that can capture both stochastic and deterministic trend, seasonality and serial correlation. We propose the plotting of absolute predictive error against predictive standard deviation. A series of such plots is utilized to determine which of several nested and non-nested models is optimal in terms of minimizing the dispersion of the predictive distribution and restricting predictive outliers. We apply the techniques to modelling monthly counts of fatal road crashes in Australia where economic, consumption and weather variables are available and we find that three such variables should be included in addition to the time series filter. The approach leads to graphical techniques to determine strengths of relationships between the dependent variable and covariates and to detect model inadequacy as well as determining useful numerical summaries.     

Extreme quantile estimation based on financial time series

Estimation of market risk is an important problem in finance. Two well-known risk measures, viz., value at risk and median shortfall, turn out to be extreme quantiles of the marginal distribution of asset return. Time series on asset returns are known to exhibit certain stylized facts, such as heavy tails, skewness, volatility clustering, etc. Therefore, estimation of extreme quantiles in the presence of such features in the data seems to be of natural interest. It is difficult to capture most of these stylized facts using one specific time series model. This motivates nonparametric and extreme value theory-based estimation of extreme quantiles that do not require exact specification of the asset return model. We review these quantile estimators and compare their known properties. Their finite sample performance are compared using Monte Carlo simulation. We propose a new estimator that exhibits encouraging finite sample performance while estimating extreme quantile in the right tail region.     

BL-GARCH models with elliptical distributed innovations

In this work, we discuss the class of bilinear GARCH (BL-GARCH) models that are capable of capturing simultaneously two key properties of non-linear time series: volatility clustering and leverage effects. It has often been observed that the marginal distributions of such time series have heavy tails; thus we examine the BL-GARCH model in a general setting under some non-normal distributions. We investigate some probabilistic properties of this model and we conduct a Monte Carlo experiment to evaluate the small-sample performance of the maximum likelihood estimation (MLE) methodology for various models. Finally, within-sample estimation properties were studied using S&P 500 daily returns, when the features of interest manifest as volatility clustering and leverage effects. The main results suggest that the Student-t BL-GARCH seems highly appropriate to describe the S&P 500 daily returns.     

Time series modelling of childhood diseases: a dynamical systems approach

A key issue in the dynamical modelling of epidemics is the synthesis of complex mathematical models and data by means of time series analysis. We report such an approach, focusing on the particularly well-documented case of measles. We propose the use of a discrete time epidemic model comprising the infected and susceptible class as state variables. The model uses a discrete time version of the susceptible–exposed–infected–recovered type epidemic models, which can be fitted to observed disease incidence time series. We describe a method for reconstructing the dynamics of the susceptible class, which is an unobserved state variable of the dynamical system. The model provides a remarkable fit to the data on case reports of measles in England and Wales from 1944 to 1964. Morever, its systematic part explains the well-documented predominant biennial cyclic pattern. We study the dynamic behaviour of the time series model and show that episodes of annual cyclicity, which have not previously been explained quantitatively, arise as a response to a quicker replenishment of the susceptible class during the baby boom, around 1947.     

A geometric time series model with a new dependent Bernoulli counting series

ABSTRACT

New generalized binomial thinning operator with dependent counting series is introduced. An integer valued time series model with geometric marginals based on this thinning operator is constructed. Main features of the process are analyzed and determined. Estimation of the parameters are presented and some asymptotic properties of the obtained estimators are discussed. Behavior of the estimators is described through the numerical results. Also, model is applied on the real data set and compared to some relevant INAR(1) models.     

A factor model approach for the joint segmentation with between‐series correlation

We consider the detection of changes in the mean of a set of time series. The breakpoints are allowed to be series specific, and the series are assumed to be correlated. The correlation between the series is supposed to be constant along time but is allowed to take an arbitrary form. We show that such a dependence structure can be encoded in a factor model. Thanks to this representation, the inference of the breakpoints can be achieved via dynamic programming, which remains one the most efficient algorithms. We propose a model selection procedure to determine both the number of breakpoints and the number of factors. This proposed method is implemented in the FASeg R package, which is available on the CRAN. We demonstrate the performances of our procedure through simulation experiments and present an application to geodesic data.     

对经过重建和调整后的我国婴儿死亡率的验证

本文根据婴儿死亡率随人均GDP的动态变化规律筛选最佳验证模型,验证了时间序列模型重新构建的1952－1980年婴儿死亡率和调整校正的1981－1990年婴儿死亡率。结果表明幂函数形式为相对较好的验证模型,拟合精度稍逊于时间序列预测模型,验证模型与时间序列模型的预测结果与历史婴儿死亡率比较,变异程度无显著差异,且预测结果与建立国家儿童死亡监测网络后的国家监测地区婴儿死亡率形成了平稳性过渡。文章认为以时间序列模型重新构建和调整校正的婴儿死亡率比较可靠,更加接近当时的实际水平。     

PREDICTION-FOCUSED MODEL SELECTION FOR AUTOREGRESSIVE MODELS

In order to make predictions of future values of a time series, one needs to specify a forecasting model. A popular choice is an autoregressive time‐series model, for which the order of the model is chosen by an information criterion. We propose an extension of the focused information criterion (FIC) for model‐order selection, with emphasis on a high predictive accuracy (i.e. the mean squared forecast error is low). We obtain theoretical results and illustrate by means of a simulation study and some real data examples that the FIC is a valid alternative to the Akaike information criterion (AIC) and the Bayesian information criterion (BIC) for selection of a prediction model. We also illustrate the possibility of using the FIC for purposes other than forecasting, and explore its use in an extended model.     

Simple linear regression with multiple level shifts

The authors study the properties of the ordinary least squares trend estimator in a simple linear regression model with multiple known level shift times. The error component in the model is taken to be a general short‐memory stationary time series. The authors establish the consistency and asymptotic normality of the estimator. They also present a climatological application in which the multiple level shifts are prominent features.