Identification in the context of multivariate state space modelling involves the specification of the dimension of the state vector. One identification approach requires an estimate of the rank of a Hankel matrix. The most frequently used approaches of rank determination rely on information...

The investigation of the presence of structural change in economic and financial series is a major preoccupation in econometrics. A number of tests have been developed and used to explore the stationarity properties of various processes. Most of the focus has rested on the first two moments of a...

In this paper, we investigate the effects of cross-sectional disturbance correlation on a previously suggested panel data stationarity test. We find that the previously suggested test has a serious size distortion if the disturbances to different cross sections are correlated. We suggest a new...

In this paper, we study the small sample properties of the panel data stationarity test of Hadri (2000). We find that the previously suggested moments, that are to be used when standardizing the panel data stationarity test, cause size distortions when samples are small and serial correlation in...

Recently, considerable emphasis has been placed on the problems arising out of cross-sectional dependence in panel unit root tests. This paper adopts the factor based cross-sectional dependence paradigm of Bai and Ng (2004) but suggests alternative factor extraction methods. Some theoretical...

In this paper we provide tests for the unit root hypothesis against the occurence of an unspecified number of breaks which may be larger than 2 but smaller that the maximum allowed number of breaks, m, in univariate time series models. The advocated procedure is considerably less computationally...

This paper investigates the merger wave hypothesis for the US and the UK employing a Markov regime switching model. Using quarterly data covering the last thirty years, for the US, we identify the beginning of a merger wave in the mid 1990s but not the much-discussed 1980s merger wave. We argue...

Testing the rank of a matrix of estimated parameters is key in a large variety of econometric modelling scenarios. This paper describes general methods to test for the rank of a matrix, and provides details on a variety of modelling scenarios in the econometrics literature where these tests are...

Testing serial dependence is central to much of time series econometrics. A number of tests that have been developed and used to explore the dependence properties of various processes. This paper builds on recent work on nonparametric tests of independence. We consider a fact that characterises...

In the present paper, time series on industrial production growth of individual countries are used to investigate the following questions: (i) Is there a common growth cycle for the euro area countries? (ii) Did the synchronization change over time? (iii) Can we discriminate between a "European"...