Structural-break models under mis-specification: Implications for forecasting

Abstract

This paper revisits the least squares estimator of the linear regression with a structural break. We view the model as an approximation to the true data generating process whose exact nature is unknown but perhaps changing over time either continuously or with some jumps. This view is widely held in the forecasting literature and under this view, the time series dependence property of all the observed variables is unstable as well. We establish that the rate of convergence of the estimator to a properly defined limit is at most the cube root of T, where T is the sample size, which is much slower than the standard super consistent rate. We also provide an asymptotic distribution of the estimator and that of the Gaussian quasi likelihood ratio statistic for a certain class of true data generating processes. We relate our finding to current forecast combination methods and propose a new averaging scheme. Our method compares favourably with various contemporary forecasting methods in forecasting a number of macroeconomic series.