A note on testing hypotheses for stationary processes in the frequency domain

In a recent paper, Eichler (2008) [11] considered a class of non- and semiparametric hypotheses in multivariate stationary processes, which are characterized by a functional of the spectral density matrix. The corresponding statistics are obtained using kernel estimates for the spectral distribution and are asymptotically normally distributed under the null hypothesis and local alternatives. In this paper, we derive the asymptotic properties of these test statistics under fixed alternatives. In particular, we also show weak convergence but with a different rate compared to the null hypothesis. We also discuss potential statistical applications of the asymptotic theory by means of a small simulation study.     

A novel trace test for the mean parameters in a multivariate growth curve model

A trace test for the mean parameters of the growth curve model is proposed. It is constructed using the restricted maximum likelihood followed by an estimated likelihood ratio approach. The statistic reduces to the Lawley-Hotelling trace test for the Multivariate Analysis of Variance (MANOVA) models. Our test statistic is, therefore, a natural extension of the classical trace test to GMANOVA models. We show that the distribution of the test under the null hypothesis does not depend on the unknown covariance matrix Σ. We also show that the distributions under the null and alternative hypotheses can be represented as sums of weighted central and non-central chi-square random variables, respectively. Under the null hypothesis, the Satterthwaite approximation is used to get an approximate critical point. A novel Satterthwaite type approximation is proposed to obtain an approximate power. A simulation study is performed to evaluate the performance of our proposed test and numerical examples are provided as illustrations.     

Likelihood ratio tests of correlated multivariate samples

We develop methods to compare multiple multivariate normally distributed samples which may be correlated. The methods are new in the context that no assumption is made about the correlations among the samples. Three types of null hypotheses are considered: equality of mean vectors, homogeneity of covariance matrices, and equality of both mean vectors and covariance matrices. We demonstrate that the likelihood ratio test statistics have finite-sample distributions that are functions of two independent Wishart variables and dependent on the covariance matrix of the combined multiple populations. Asymptotic calculations show that the likelihood ratio test statistics converge in distribution to central Chi-squared distributions under the null hypotheses regardless of how the populations are correlated. Following these theoretical findings, we propose a resampling procedure for the implementation of the likelihood ratio tests in which no restrictive assumption is imposed on the structures of the covariance matrices. The empirical size and power of the test procedure are investigated for various sample sizes via simulations. Two examples are provided for illustration. The results show good performance of the methods in terms of test validity and power.     

On consistent testing for serial correlation of unknown form in vector time series models

Multivariate autoregressive models with exogenous variables (VARX) are often used in econometric applications. Many properties of the basic statistics for this class of models rely on the assumption of independent errors. Using results of Hong (Econometrica 64 (1996) 837), we propose a new test statistic for checking the hypothesis of non-correlation or independence in the Gaussian case. The test statistic is obtained by comparing the spectral density of the errors under the null hypothesis of independence with a kernel-based spectral density estimator. The asymptotic distribution of the statistic is derived under the null hypothesis. This test generalizes the portmanteau test of Hosking (J. Amer. Statist. Assoc. 75 (1980) 602). The consistency of the test is established for a general class of static regression models with autocorrelated errors. Its asymptotic slope is derived and the asymptotic relative efficiency within the class of possible kernels is also investigated. Finally, the level and power of the resulting tests are also studied by simulation.     

Dimensionality in Manova Tested by a Closed Testing Procedure

The decision on dimensionality of the space spanned by general linear functions of the parameter matrix of a MANOVA model is considered. This problem is related to the investigation, whether graphically or analytically, of significant empirical departures from the overall null hypothesis on these functions. A closed testing procedure for a sequence of relevant hypotheses is proposed. Unlike the classical procedures based on asymptotic distributions of the likelihood ratio statistics, the proposed method ensures that the Type I familywise error rate does not exceed the nominalα-level. Also, it is consistent with testing the overall null hypothesis, while relying on tests of subsequent linear hypotheses implied by the former. Examples are given to compare the proposed procedure with a classical one.     

Change-point inference on volatility in noisy Itô semimartingales

This work is concerned with tests on structural breaks in the spot volatility process of a general Itô semimartingale based on discrete observations contaminated with i.i.d. microstructure noise. We construct a consistent test building up on infill asymptotic results for certain functionals of spectral spot volatility estimates. A weak limit theorem is established under the null hypothesis relying on extreme value theory. We prove consistency of the test and of an associated estimator for the change point. A simulation study illustrates the finite-sample performance of the method and efficiency gains compared to a skip-sampling approach.     

Adaptive minimax testing in the discrete regression scheme

We consider the problem of testing hypotheses on the regression function from n observations on the regular grid on [0,1]. We wish to test the null hypothesis that the regression function belongs to a given functional class (parametric or even nonparametric) against a composite nonparametric alternative. The functions under the alternative are separated in the L₂-norm from any function in the null hypothesis. We assume that the regression function belongs to a wide range of Hölder classes but as the smoothness parameter of the regression function is unknown, an adaptive approach is considered. It leads to an optimal and unavoidable loss of order Open image in new window in the minimax rate of testing compared with the non-adaptive setting. We propose a smoothness-free test that achieves the optimal rate, and finally we prove the lower bound showing that no test can be consistent if in the distance between the functions under the null hypothesis and those in the alternative, the loss is of order smaller than the optimal loss.     

Model checking in errors-in-variables regression

This paper discusses a class of minimum distance tests for fitting a parametric regression model to a class of regression functions in the errors-in-variables model. These tests are based on certain minimized distances between a nonparametric regression function estimator and a deconvolution kernel estimator of the conditional expectation of the parametric model being fitted. The paper establishes the asymptotic normality of the proposed test statistics under the null hypothesis and that of the corresponding minimum distance estimators. We also prove the consistency of the proposed tests against a fixed alternative and obtain the asymptotic distributions for general local alternatives. Simulation studies show that the testing procedures are quite satisfactory in the preservation of the finite sample level and in terms of a power comparison.     

Some implications of the union-intersection principle for tests of sphericity

The sphericity hypothesis may be expressed as an intersection of simpler hypotheses on the invariant subspaces of the variance matrix. Applying the union-intersection principle to dissections of this type establishes a link between tests of independence and tests of sphericity. We use some recent results of Bloomfield and Watson [2] and Knott [4] to derive a class of union-intersection tests for sphericity from likelihood ratio tests of independence of two sets of variates. As well, we show that the ordinary likelihood ratio test for sphericity has a natural union-intersection interpretation.     

A test for elliptical symmetry

This paper presents a statistic for testing the hypothesis of elliptical symmetry. The statistic also provides a specialized test of multivariate normality. We obtain the asymptotic distribution of this statistic under the null hypothesis of multivariate normality, and give a bootstrapping procedure for approximating the null distribution of the statistic under an arbitrary elliptically symmetric distribution. We present simulation results to examine the accuracy of the asymptotic distribution and the performance of the bootstrapping procedure. Finally, for selected alternatives, we compare the power of our test statistic with that of recently proposed tests for elliptical symmetry given by Manzotti et al. [A statistic for testing the null hypothesis of elliptical symmetry, J. Multivariate Anal. 81 (2002) 274-285] and Schott [Testing for elliptical symmetry in covariance-matrix-based analyses, Statist. Probab. Lett. 60 (2002) 395-404], and with that of the well known tests for multivariate normality of Mardia [Measures of multivariate skewness and kurtosis with applications, Biometrika 57 (1970) 519-530] and Baringhaus and Henze [A consistent test for multivariate normality based on the empirical characteristic function, Metrika 35 (1988) 339-348].     

Asymptotic tests of composite hypotheses for non-ergodic type stochastic processes

Limiting distributions of a score statistic and the likelihood ratio statistic for testing a composite hypothesis involving several parameters in non-ergodic type stochastic processes are obtained. It is shown that, unlike in the usual theory (ergodic type processes), the limiting distributions of these statistics are different both under the null and a contiguous sequence of alternative hypotheses. The results are applied to a regression model with explosive autoregressive Gaussian errors. In the discussion of this example a modified score statistic is suggested where the limiting null and non-null distributions are the same as those of the likelihood ratio statistic.     

Simultaneous control of false positives and false negatives in multiple hypotheses testing

Multiple hypotheses testing is concerned with appropriately controlling the rate of false positives, false negatives or both when testing several hypotheses simultaneously. Nowadays, the common approach to testing multiple hypotheses calls for controlling the expected proportion of falsely rejected null hypotheses referred to as the false discovery rate (FDR) or suitable measures based on the positive false discovery rate (pFDR). In this paper, we consider the problem of determining levels that both false positives and false negatives can be controlled simultaneously. As our risk function, we use the expected value of the maximum between the proportions of false positives and false negatives, with the expectation being taken conditional on the event that at least one hypothesis is rejected and one is accepted, referred to as hybrid error rate (HER). We then develop, based on HER, an analog of p-value termed as h-value to test the individual hypotheses. The use of the new procedure is illustrated using the well-known public data set by Golub et al. [Molecular classification of cancer: class discovery and class prediction by gene expression monitoring, Science 386 (1999) 531-537] with Affymetrix arrays of patients with acute lymphoic leukemia and acute myeloid leukemia.     

Testing strategies for model specification

A crucial element in the development of econometric methodology during the past decade has been the concern with testing as opposed to estimating econometric models. In this paper we discuss—especially for the econometric analysis of time series—the main types of test procedures, and we also investigate the opportunities to uphold the Neyman-Pearson theory in the context of thorough model specification testing. In applied work it is quite usual to carry out several tests on the same set of sample data. We consider an extension of the Neyman-Pearson framework to the case of such repeated testing, and examine situations where the various hypotheses under test have a particular nesting structure. For the case where a sequence of superposed alternatives is tested by so-called marginal tests, we prove that the various test statistics are asymptotically independent under a common null hypothesis if the statistics are based on either the likelihood-ratio, or the Wald, or the Lagrange-multiplier approach. Testing a particular null hypothesis against a series of juxtaposed alternatives appears to lead to independent test statistics only in specific circumstances. It is shown how independence of test statistics enables the control over the overall Type I error probability, which is an essential element in the Neyman-Pearson theory. Using the notions of constructive hypotheses and auxiliary hypotheses, we can draw a clear distinction between specification tests and misspecification tests. Next an overview is given of approaches to and examples of specification and misspecification testing. With respect to the former, attention is paid to the problem determining the order of dynamics and discriminating between system dynamics and error dynamics. The misspecification testing is reviewed for specification error, nonconstancy of coefficients, heteroscedasticity, serial dependence, and nonnormality of disturbances. Also the problem of testing for several misspecifications jointly or sequentially is considered. Finally we discuss the options and associated difficulties in implementing the various tests in an overall testing strategy.     

A note on a Mar?enko-Pastur type theorem for time series

In this note we develop an extension of the Mar?enko-Pastur theorem to time series model with temporal correlations. The limiting spectral distribution (LSD) of the sample covariance matrix is characterised by an explicit equation for its Stieltjes transform depending on the spectral density of the time series. A numerical algorithm is then given to compute the density functions of these LSD’s.     

Empirical likelihood inference for linear transformation models

Empirical likelihood inference is developed for censored survival data under the linear transformation models, which generalize Cox's [Regression models and life tables (with Discussion), J. Roy. Statist. Soc. Ser. B 34 (1972) 187-220] proportional hazards model. We show that the limiting distribution of the empirical likelihood ratio is a weighted sum of standard chi-squared distribution. Empirical likelihood ratio tests for the regression parameters with and without covariate adjustments are also derived. Simulation studies suggest that the empirical likelihood ratio tests are more accurate (under the null hypothesis) and powerful (under the alternative hypothesis) than the normal approximation based tests of Chen et al. [Semiparametric of transformation models with censored data, Biometrika 89 (2002) 659-668] when the model is different from the proportional hazards model and the proportion of censoring is high.     

Enhanced one-sided confidence regions for a multivariate location parameter

If a one-sided test for a multivariate location parameter is inverted, the resulting confidence region may have an unpleasant shape. In particular, if the null and alternative hypothesis are both composite and complementary, the confidence region usually does not resemble the alternative parameter region in shape, but rather a reflected version of the null parameter region.We illustrate this effect and show one possibility of obtaining confidence regions for the location parameter that are smaller and have a more suitable shape for the type of problems investigated. This method is based on the closed testing principle applied to a family of nested hypotheses.     

Moderate deviations for quadratic forms in Gaussian stationary processes

Moderate deviations limit theorem is proved for quadratic forms in zero-mean Gaussian stationary processes. Two particular cases are the cumulative periodogram and the kernel spectral density estimator. We also derive the exponential decay of moderate deviation probabilities of goodness-of-fit tests for the spectral density and then discuss intermediate asymptotic efficiencies of tests.     

Subsampling tests of parameter hypotheses and overidentifying restrictions with possible failure of identification

We introduce a general testing procedure in models with possible identification failure that has exact asymptotic rejection probability under the null hypothesis. The procedure is widely applicable and in this paper we apply it to tests of arbitrary linear parameter hypotheses as well as to tests of overidentification in time series models given by unconditional moment conditions. The main idea is to subsample classical tests, like for example the Wald or the J test. More precisely, instead of using critical values based on asymptotic theory, we compute data-dependent critical values based on the subsampling technique.We show that under full identification the resulting tests are consistent against fixed alternatives and that they have exact asymptotic rejection probabilities under the null hypothesis independent of identification failure. Furthermore, the subsampling tests of parameter hypotheses are shown to have the same local power as the original tests under full identification.An algorithm is provided that automates the block size choice needed to implement the subsampling testing procedure. A Monte Carlo study shows that the tests have reasonable size properties and often outperform other robust tests in terms of power.     

Tests for multiple regression based on simplicial depth

A general approach for developing distribution free tests for general linear models based on simplicial depth is applied to multiple regression. The tests are based on the asymptotic distribution of the simplicial regression depth, which depends only on the distribution law of the vector product of regressor variables. Based on this formula, the spectral decomposition and thus the asymptotic distribution is derived for multiple regression through the origin and multiple regression with Cauchy distributed explanatory variables. The errors may be heteroscedastic and the concrete form of the error distribution does not need to be known. Moreover, the asymptotic distribution for multiple regression with intercept does not depend on the location and scale of the explanatory variables. A simulation study suggests that the tests can be applied also to normal distributed explanatory variables. An application on multiple regression for shape analysis of fishes demonstrates the applicability of the new tests and in particular their outlier robustness.     

Efficiencies of tests and estimators forp-order autoregressive processes when the error distribution is nonnormal

Summary We considerpth order autoregressive time series where the shocks need not be normal. By employing the concept of contiguity, we obtain the sysmptotic power for tests of hypothesis concerning the autoregressive parameters. Our approach allows consideration of the double exponential and other thicker-tailed distributions for the shocks. We derive a new result in the contiguity framework that leads directly to an expression for the Pitman efficiencies of tests as well as estimators. The numerical values of the efficiencies suggest a lack of robustness for the normal theory least squares estimators when the shock distribution is thick tailed or an outlier prone mixed normal. An important alternative test statistic is proposed that competes with the normal theory tests. This research was supported by the Office of Naval Research under Grant No. N00014-78-C-0722 and by the Army Research Office.