Statistics is often difficult for students, since it requires coordination of quantitative and graphical insights with mathematical ability. Furthermore, ever-increasing special knowledge of statistics is demanded, since data of increasing complexity and size need to be understood and analyzed....

Newly developed and advanced methods for nonlinear time series analysis are in general not available in standard software packages. Moreover, their implementation requires substantial time, computing power as well as programming skills. The recent results on lag and bandwidth selection methods...

A number of unit root tests which accommodate a deterministic level shift at a known point in time are compared in a Monte Carlo study. The tests differ in the way they treat the deterministic term of the DGP. It turns out that Phillips-Perron type tests have very poor small sample properties...