In this paper we examine the interaction between data transformation and the empirical evidence obtained when testing for (non-)linearity. For this purpose we examine nonlinear features in 64 monthly and 53 quarterly US macroeconomic variables for a range of Box-Cox data transformations. Our...

Nine macroeconomic variables are forecast in a real-time scenario using a variety of adaptive, nonadaptive, linear and nonlinear econometric models.

Using a standard 4-variable linear vector error correction model (VECM), we first show that the null hypothesis of linearity can be strongly rejected against the alternative of smooth transition autoregressive nonlinearity. An important result from this stage of the analysis is that the...

We address the issue of time varying persistence of shocks to macroeconomic time series variables by proposing a new and parsimonious time series model. Our model assumes that this time varying persistence depends on a linear combination of lagged explanatory variables, where this combination...

To enable answering the question in the title, we introduce a bivariate censored latent effects autoregression, and discuss representation, parameter estimation, diagnostics and inference. We show that this bivariate nonlinear model is very useful for examining common nonlinearity. We apply the...

A recent addition to the ARCH family of econometric models was introduced by Ding, Granger and Engle (1993) wherein the power term by which the data is transformed was estimated within the model rather than being imposed by the researcher. This paper considers the ability of the Power GARCH...

This paper combines techniques drawn from the literature on evolutionary optimization algorithms along with bootstrap based statistical tests. Bootstrapping is used as a general framework for estimating objectives out of sample by redrawing subsets from a training sample. Evolution is used to...

This paper complements the results of Hausman and Taylor (1981) and Cornewell, Schmidt and Sickles (1990) and generalizes Park and Simar (1994) by examining the semiparametric efficient estimation of panel models in which the random effects and the regressors have certain patterns of correlation.