This study tests for a break in the persistence of EMU government bond yield spreads examining data from France, Italy and Spain and using German interest rates as a kind of benchmark. The results reported here provide evidence for breaks between 2006 and 2008. The persistence of the yield...

We show that specific nonlinear time series models such as SETAR, LSTAR, ESTAR and Markov switching which are common in econometric practice can hardly be distinguished from long memory by standard methods such as the GPH estimator for the memory parameter or linearity tests either general or...

We show that tests for a break in the persistence of a time series in the classical I(0) - I(1) framework have serious size distortions when the actual data generating process exhibits long-range dependencies. We prove that the limiting distribution of a CUSUM of squares based test depends on...

We show that the CUSUM-squared based test for a change in persistence by Leybourne et al. (2007) is not robust against shifts in the mean. A mean shift leads to serious size distortions. Therefore, adjusted critical values are needed when it is known that the data generating process has a mean...

We develop a Wald type test to distinguish between long memory and ESTAR nonlinearity by using a directed-Wald statistic to overcome the problem of restricted parameters under the alternative. The test is derived from two basic model specifications where the first is the standard model based on...

We consider the problem of forecasting time series with long memory when the memory parameter is subject to a structural break. By means of a large-scale Monte Carlo study we show that ignoring such a change in persistence leads to substantially reduced forecasting precision. The strength of...

In ESTAR models it is usually difficult to determine parameter estimates, as it can be observed in the literature. We show that the phenomena of getting strongly biased estimators is a consequence of the so-called identification problem, the problem of properly distinguishing the transition...

While it is widely agreed that Purchasing Power Parity (PPP) holds as a long-run concept the specific dynamic driving the process is largely build upon a priori economic belief rather than a thorough statistical modeling procedure. The two prevailing time series models, i.e. the exponential...

Detecting the number of breaks in the mean can be challenging when it comes to the long memory framework. Tree-based procedures can be applied to time series when the location and number of mean shifts are unknown and estimate the breaks consistently though with possible overfitting. For pruning...

A simple procedure for the specification of the transition function describing the regime switch in nonlinear autoregressive models is proposed. This procedure is based on auxiliary regressions of unit root tests and is applicable to a variety of transition functions. In contrast to other...