An Out-of-Sample Test for Nonlinearity in Financial Time Series: An Empirical Application

Abstract

This paper employs a local information, nearest neighbour forecasting methodology to test for evidence of nonlinearity in financial time series. Evidence from well-known data generating process are provided and compared with returns from the Athens stock exchange given the in-sample evidence of nonlinear dynamics that has appeared in the literature. Nearest neighbour forecasts fail to produce more accurate forecasts from a simple AR model. This does not substantiate the presence of in-sample nonlinearity in the series.