Asymptotic expansion of M-estimators with long-memory errors

Abstract

This paper obtains a higher-order asymptotic expansion of a class of M-estimators of the one-sample location parameter when the errors form a long-memory moving average. A suitably standardized difference between an M-estimator and the sample mean is shown to have a limiting distribution. The nature of the limiting distribution depends on the range of the dependence parameter $\theta$. If, for example, $1/3 < \theta < 1$, then a suitably standardized difference between the sample median and the sample mean converges weakly to a normal distribution provided the common error distribution is symmetric. If $0 < \theta < 1/3$, then the corresponding limiting distribution is nonnormal. This paper thus goes beyond that of Beran who observed, in the case of long-memory Gaussian errors, that M-estimators $T_n$ of the one-sample location parameter are asymptotically equivalent to the sample mean in the sense that $\Var(T_n)/\Var(\bar{X}_n) \to 1$ and $T_n = \bar{X}_n + o_P(\sqrt{\Var(\bar{X}_n)}).$