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...

This paper discusses the existence of spurious long memory in common nonlinear time series models, namely Markov switching and threshold models. We describe the asymptotic behavior of the process in terms of autocovariance and autocorrelation function and support the theoretical evidences by...

This paper proposes simple Hausman-type tests to check for bias in the log-periodogram regression of a time series believed to be long memory. The statistics are asymptotically standard normal on the null hypothesis that no bias is present, and the tests are consistent. The use of the tests in...

This paper considers blockwise empirical likelihood for real-valued linear time processes which may exhibit either short- or long-range dependence. Empirical likelihood approaches intended for weakly dependent time series can fail in the presence of strong dependence. However, a modified...

Linearity testing against smooth transition autoregressive (STAR) models when deterministic trends are potentially present in the data is considered in this paper. As opposed to recently reported results in Zhang (2012), we show that linearity tests against STAR models lead to useful results in...

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 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...

We study the empirical behaviour of semi-parametric log-periodogram estimation for long memory models when the true process exhibits a change in persistence. Simulation results confirm theoretical arguments which suggest that evidence for long memory is likely to be found. A recently proposed...

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...