An efficient estimator for the expectation of a bounded function under the residual distribution of an autoregressive process

Consider a stationary first-order autoregressive process, with i.i.d. residuals following an unknown mean zero distribution. The customary estimator for the expectation of a bounded function under the residual distribution is the empirical estimator based on the estimated residuals. We show that this estimator is not efficient, and construct a simple efficient estimator. It is adaptive with respect to the autoregression parameter.