Nonparametric unit-root tests are a useful addendum to the tool-box of time-series analysis. They tend to trade off power for enhanced robustness features. We consider combinations of the RURS (seasonal range unit roots) test statistic and a variant of the level-crossings count. This combination...

Fund-of-funds (FoF) managers face the task of selecting a (relatively) small number of hedge funds from a large universe of candidate funds. We analyse whether such a selection can be successfully achieved by looking at the track records of the available funds alone, using advanced statistical...

We propose non-nested tests for competing conditional moment restriction models using a method of empirical likelihood. Our tests are based on the method of conditional empirical likelihood developed by Kitamura, Tripathi and Ahn (2004) and Zhang and Gijbels (2003). By using the conditional...

We propose novel misspecification tests of semiparametric and fully parametric univariate diffusion models based on the estimators developed in Kristensen (Journal of Econometrics, 2010). We first demonstrate that given a preliminary estimator of either the drift or the diffusion term in a...

This paper provides a simple approach for robust testing for the trend function in the time series under uncertainty over the order of integration of the error term. The proposed approach relies on the asymptotic normality of the trend coefficient estimator and utilises t-statistic approach of...

We propose a class of robust M tests for distribution symmetry of time series data. The proposed tests are robust to the estimation effect of replacing the unknown location parameter with its consistent estimator and are constructed by extending the M tests of Kuan and Lee (2006) and Lee (2007)...

A novel estimation method for two classes of semiparametric scalar diffusion models is proposed: In the first class, the diffusion term is parameterised and the drift is left unspecified, while in the second class only the drift term is specified. Under the assumption of stationarity, the...

This work develops change-point methods for statistics of high-frequency data. The main interest is the volatility of an Itô semi-martingale, which is discretely observed over a fixed time horizon. We construct a minimax-optimal test to discriminate different smoothness classes of the...

We show that spline and wavelet series regression estimators for weakly dependent regressors attain the optimal uniform (i.e. sup-norm) convergence rate (n= log n)..p=(2p+d) of Stone (1982), where d is the number of regressors and p is the smoothness of the regression function. The optimal rate...

This paper proposes a test for missing at random (MAR). The MAR assumption is shown to be testable given instrumental variables which are independent of response given potential outcomes. A nonparametric testing procedure based on integrated squared distance is proposed. The statistic’s...