Presence Of Structural Breaks Research Articles

Bounds testing approach to analyzing the environment Kuznets curve hypothesis with structural beaks: The role of biomass energy consumption in the United States

This paper re-examines the specification of the environmental Kuznets curve (EKC) for the US economy by accounting for the presence of a major renewable energy source and trade openness over the period 1960–2016. Biomass energy consumption and trade openness as well as oil prices are considered as additional determinants of economic growth, and consequentially of CO2 emissions. The bounds testing approach to cointegration is used to examine the long-run relationship between the variables in the presence of structural breaks. The causal relationship between the variables is investigated by applying the VECM Granger causality test and accommodating structural breaks. The results confirm the presence of cointegration between the variables. Moreover, the relationship between economic growth and CO2 emissions is not only inverted-U shaped but also N-shaped in the presence of structural breaks and biomass. Biomass energy consumption lowers CO2 emissions. Exports, imports and trade openness are also environment-friendly. The causality analysis underscores a feedback effect between biomass energy consumption and CO2 emissions. Economic growth still Granger causes CO2 emissions in this new setup.

Modeling fractionally integrated maximum temperature series in India in presence of structural break

In this study, the long memory behaviour of monthly maximum temperature of India for the period 1901 to 2007 is investigated. The correlogram of the series reveals a slow hyperbolic decay, a typical shape for time series having the long memory property. Wavelet transformation is applied to decompose the temperature series into time–frequency domain in order to study the local as well as global variation over different scale and time epochs. Significant increasing trend is found in the maximum temperature series in India. The rate of increase in maximum temperature accelerated after 1960s as compared to the earlier period. Here, an attempt is also made to detect the structural break for seasonally adjusted monthly maximum temperature series. It is found that there is a significant break in maximum temperature during July, 1963. Two-stage forecasting (TSF) approach to deal with the coexistence of long memory and structural change in temperature pattern is discussed thoroughly. The forecast performance of the fitted model is assessed on the basis of relative mean absolute prediction error (RMAPE), sum of squared errors (SSE) and mean squared errors (MSE) for different forecast horizons.

Efficiency of Foreign Exchange Markets in Sub-Saharan Africa in the Presence of Structural Break: A Linear and Non-Linear Testing Approach

This study examines the efficiency of foreign exchange (forex) market of 10 selected countries in sub-Saharan Africa in the presence of structural break. It uses data on the average official exchange rate of currencies of the selected countries to the US dollar from November 1995 to October 2015. This study employs Perron unit root test with structural break to endogenously determine the break period in the forex markets. It also employs the Kim wild bootstrap variance ratio test and BDS independence test to detect linear and nonlinear dependence in forex market returns respectively. In the full sample period, the Kim wild bootstrap joint variance ratio test shows that only two forex markets are efficient while the BDS independence test reports that all the forex markets are not efficient. The subsample period analysis indicates that the efficiency of the majority of the forex markets is sensitive to structural break, thus providing evidence in support of the adaptive market hypothesis. This study suggests that ignoring structural break and nonlinearity of returns may lead to misleading results when testing for market efficiency.

Efficiency of Foreign Exchange Markets in Sub-Saharan Africa in the Presence of Structural Break: A Linear and Non-Linear Testing Approach

This study examines the efficiency of foreign exchange (forex) market of 10 selected countries in sub-Saharan Africa in the presence of structural break. It uses data on the average official exchange rate of currencies of the selected countries to the US dollar from November 1995 to October 2015. This study employs Perron unit root test with structural break to endogenously determine the break period in the forex markets. It also employs the Kim wild bootstrap variance ratio test and BDS independence test to detect linear and nonlinear dependence in forex market returns respectively. In the full sample period, the Kim wild bootstrap joint variance ratio test shows that only two forex markets are efficient while the BDS independence test reports that all the forex markets are not efficient. The subsample period analysis indicates that the efficiency of the majority of the forex markets is sensitive to structural break, thus providing evidence in support of the adaptive market hypothesis. This study suggests that ignoring structural break and nonlinearity of returns may lead to misleading results when testing for market efficiency.

Causal relationship between crude oil price, energy consumption and carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions in Ecuador

AbstractThis study examines the causal relationship between crude oil price, energy consumption and CO2 emissions in Ecuador over the period 1971–2013 incorporating indicators of economic performance. ARDL bounds testing approach to cointegration provides evidence of cointegration between the variables in the presence of structural break in the series. The long‐run effect of energy consumption on CO2 emissions in the oil‐dependent economy is found to be positive and statistically significant. The long‐run and short‐run causal effects of crude oil price on energy consumption and CO2 emissions in the economy are found positive and statistically significant, suggesting that higher crude oil prices create economic conditions that generate more energy consumption and CO2 emissions in the Ecuadorean economy. The direction of causality among the variables examined using Toda‐Yamamoto Granger causality test procedure suggests that a unidirectional causality runs from crude oil price to energy consumption and economic growth, and bidirectional causality between energy consumption and CO2 emissions. A unidirectional causality that flows from CO2 emissions to economic growth through financial development is also observed in the economy.

Structural breaks and unit root in macroeconomic time series: evidence from Nigeria

The discourse on the properties of macroeconomic time series has received a considerable interest in recent literature. This is because the presence of unit in a realization of a stochastic process implies that shocks to the time series have a persistent effect with policy implications. Hence, this paper investigates the unit root properties of ten Nigerian macroeconomic time series using quarterly data from 1981-2015. For comparison, first we apply the conventional augmented Dickey-Fuller unit root test to examine the null of a unit root in the ten macroeconomic series, and we proceed to examine the unit root properties using the Lagrange Multiplier (LM) endogenous unit root tests that account for the presence of one-break and two-break as proposed by Lee and Strazicich (2003, 2013). On employing the augmented Dickey-Fuller test that does not account for structural breaks, our empirical results indicate that the unit root null hypothesis cannot be rejected for nine of the ten series considered in the study. However, on utilizing the Lagrange Multiplier (LM) endogenous one and two structural breaks test, we reject the unit root null in favour of the one and two-break stationary alternative for six of the ten series (60% rejection) considered in our study. These results imply that unit root tests that do not account sufficiently for the presence of structural breaks lead to misleading inference. These findings have important implications for the macroeconomic policy-making, modeling and forecasting of the Nigerian economy. We therefore, recommend that structural breaks should be taken into account in the econometric analysis of Nigerian macroeconomic variables.

ASEAN’s intra-regional tourism demand to Thailand

ABSTRACTThis paper presents an overview of intra-regional tourism in ASEAN at the beginning of the challenging times that will come with the constitution of the ASEAN Economic Community (AEC). Thailand is chosen as the destination country and the other nine countries are selected as origin. After presenting ASEAN’s intra-regional tourism, the study develops a model of long-run demand. The coefficients are estimated by a time-varying parameters method considering the potential presence of structural breaks, and its implication. The results present and discuss the implications of income, own price, and cross price elasticities. As concluding recommendations, this study suggests that while the region should take advantage of the expansion of the Asian markets due to economic growth and liberalization of ASEAN since 2016, it should use different policies in each origin market.

Stock market development and economic growth: Empirical evidence from China

The interplay between the stock market and the real economy is crucial in the various channels through which financial markets drive economic growth. In the current study, we investigate the effects of this relationship on the Chinese economy, which is the fastest growing and largest emerging economy in the world. The methodology incudes unit root testing in the presence of structural breaks and the Autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) model. The results of the analysis showed that the global financial crisis from 2007 to 2012 had a significant impact on both the real sector and the financial sector in China. Our findings also suggest that the Shanghai A share market has had a long-run negative association with the real sector of the economy; however, the magnitude of impact has been miniscule. These findings indicate that this negative relationship is proof of the so-called existence of irrational prosperity in the stock market and the economic bubble in China's financial sector. The findings did not show any evidence of a relationship between the stock market and the real economy in the short run. Toda Yamamoto causality test showed that economic growth has spurred the development of the Shenzhen B share market. Furthermore, the equally weighted index showed that stock market liquidity and stock market sectoral indices were alternative measures of stock market activities. The results were robust to the alternative measures of stock market activities. The results also indicate that state-owned monopolies play an important role in China's economic performance because they stimulate the economy in the short run.

Long memory or structural breaks: Some evidence for African stock markets

This study explores two main issues. One: How do the exchange rate and inflation rate impact long term dependency structure of weekly returns of seven African stock markets? Two: What is the long term dependency structure of stock returns and variance in the absence and in the presence of structural breaks? The sample period is 06-2002 through 02-2014. The returns are de-thinned to account for illiquidity of stock returns. The study implements sequential multiple structural breaks test to identify structural breaks. Three semi-parametric tests and three parametric methods are then implemented to test for the long memory behavior of raw returns and break-adjusted returns. The long memory estimates decline monotonically in magnitude or in statistical significance as returns are adjusted for exchange rate and then inflation rate. There is evidence of multiple structural shifts whose break dates correspond to major domestic or global events. Without structural breaks, the results indicate the existence of long memory components in returns and variance. Using the break-adjusted returns, the long memory evidence in returns and variance weakens in magnitude and/or statistical significance or just dissipates in some ASMs. The absence of long memory using break-adjusted returns suggests that long memory may be an artifact of short memory encountering breaks in some ASMs. Caution is therefore warranted when interpreting long memory inferences in the presence of structural breaks and making policy recommendations. Our evidence is useful to investors, fund managers and policy makers.

Structural breaks in unbiased volatility estimator: Modeling and forecasting

The study provides a framework to model the unbiased extreme value volatility estimator (The AddRS estimator) in presence of structural breaks. We observe that the structural breaks in the volatility based on the AddRS estimator can partly explain its long memory property. We evaluate the forecasting performance of the proposed framework and compare the results with the corresponding results of the models from the GARCH family. The forecasts evaluation exercises consider the cases when future breaks are known as well as unknown. Our findings indicate that the proposed framework outperform the sophisticated GARCH class of models in forecasting realized volatility. Moreover, we devise a trading strategy based on the forecasts of the variance to highlight the economic significance of the proposed framework. We find that a risk averse investor can make substantial gain using the volatility forecasts based on the proposed frameworks in comparison to the GARCH family of models.

Growth in a time of austerity: evidence from the UK

AbstractThis paper uses an empirical approach to test the specific causal relationship between debt and growth in the UK, in the context of the debate surrounding the use of a policy known as austerity measures. This time series perspective makes use of more recent Granger causality and cointegration tests that allow for non‐stationarity in macroeconomic time series data in the presence of structural breaks. Controlling for exogenous shocks associated with the period around the financial crisis, we find no evidence of a causal relationship between economic growth and public debt for the UK.

Dynamics of Wood Pulp Production: Evidence from OECD Countries

This paper investigates whether shocks to pulp for paper production for 17 Organisation for Economic Co-Operation and Development (OECD) members over the period 1980–2012 are transitory or permanent. A variety of univariate and panel data unit root tests are employed. The presence of structural breaks is taken into account when performing those tests. Based on the Narayan-Popp univariate unit root test, wood production series for approximately 64.71% of countries is found to follow a non-stationary process. However, univariate unit root tests tend to have low power when the time span is relatively short. Consequently, three generations of panel unit root tests are considered. Cross-sectional dependence is detected. The first generation of unit roots do not effectively control for cross-sectional dependence, while the second and third generations do. The third generation accounts mainly for cross-sectional co-integration. As a confirmatory analysis, both unit root tests that tests for the null of non-stationarity and stationarity are considered. Most of the panel unit root tests point towards a non-stationary process. Hence, while these shocks can be transmitted to other economic sectors, past behaviours of wood production cannot be used for forecasting purposes. Forest conservation policies can have a permanent impact on pulp for paper production.

Unit Root Tests for Long Memory Series in the Presence of Structural Breaks in Variance

This paper extends the unit root tests to long memory observations in the existence of variance breaks. Given for the case of non-constant variance, the asymptotic properties of commonly used unit root tests are derived under the null hypothesis. It is shown that the non-constant variance can both inflate and deflate the rejection frequency, thus the statistic tests are not robust. The simulation results also indicate the extent of size distortion is heavily sensitive to the location and magnitude of change points, long memory index and sample size.

Market Efficiency in the MENA Equity Markets: Evidence from Newly Developed Tests and Regime Change

A major issue in financial economics is the behavior of stock market returns over long horizons. This paper provides an empirical investigation of the random walk hypothesis in the MENA equity markets. We use the variance ratio tests developed by Wright (2000), Kim and Wang and Chow Denning (1993) to test for the weak form market efficiency. Then, we use the unit root tests proposed by Saikkonen and LA¼tkepohl (2002) and Lanne et al . (2002), which allow for a level shift in the data generating process. Our results confirm the stationarity of the MENA equity markets returns in the presence of structural breaks, with the breaks happening mostly during the 2008 and 2009 periods. Further, the findings from our sub-samples indicate that the results from the last sub-periods support the belief that these markets may have been approaching a state of being fairly weak-form efficient, which reflects the future prospects of the MENA countries.

Economic growth, financial development, urbanisation and electricity consumption nexus in UAE

This study aims to explore the relationship between economic growth, urbanisation, financial development and electricity consumption in United Arab Emirates for the period 1975–2011. The ARDL bounds testing approach is employed to examine the long-run relationship between the variables in the presence of structural breaks. The VECM Granger causality is applied to investigate the direction of causal relationships between the variables. Our empirical exercise validated the cointegration between the series in the case of United Arab Emirates. Further, results reveal that an inverted U-shaped relationship is found between economic growth and electricity consumption. Financial development adds in electricity consumption. The relationship between urbanisation and electricity consumption is also an inverted U-shaped. This implies that urbanisation increases electricity consumption initially and, after a threshold level of urbanisation, electricity demand falls. The causality analysis finds feedback hypothesis between economic growth and electricity consumption, i.e. economic growth and electricity consumption are interdependent. The bidirectional causality is found between financial development and electricity consumption. Economic growth and urbanisation Granger cause each other. The feedback hypothesis is also found between urbanisation and financial development, financial development and economic growth, and the same is true for electricity consumption and urbanisation.

Asymmetries in the Relationship between Economic Activity and Oil Prices in the Selected EU Countries

In this paper the threshold (T-ECM) and linear (ECM) error correction models are estimated to examine the short-run and long-run Granger causality in terms of asymmetric and symmetric relationship for seven European Union economies (Germany, France, Denmark, the Netherlands, Poland, Czech Republic and the whole EU). The relationship between production, inflation and oil prices are analyzed in the presence of structural break when both, the change in intercept and the change in the slope of the trend function exist. Threshold ECMs show the asymmetric response of production and inflation to the changes in oil prices in the case of Germany, France, Poland and the EU. For other economies (Netherlands, Denmark and Czech Republic) the reaction was rather symmetric.

CPI and inflation in Kenya. Structural breaks, non-linearities and dependence

This paper deals with the analysis of inflation in Kenya. We use data from the Consumer Price Index and inflation to examine, among other issues, features such as the presence of structural breaks, non-linearities and time dependence or persistence in the data. The results indicate the presence of a structural break in the inflation rate taking place in 1994, observing a level shift and a reduction in the degree of integration of the series. However, the results change depending on the assumptions made on the error term. Thus, under no autocorrelation the unit root hypothesis cannot be rejected in any of the two subsamples; however, under the more realistic assumption of autocorrelation, mean reversion takes places in the two subsample, with a slightly reduction after the break. These results are explained in terms of the policy reform and intervention during the last two decades, and some policy recommendations are also presented in the paper.

How does monetary policy and private sector credit interact in a developing economy?

This paper evaluates the nature of relationship between monetary policy and private sector credit as well as the impact of structural break on the relationship by applying a battery of econometric tests on Nigeria data. The cointegrating regression results reveal evidence of long-run relationship between monetary policy and credit to private sector. Estimates from the long-run parameter stability tests support cointegration in the presence of structural breaks. Similarly, error correction model results show that changes in credit have positive and significant short-term effects on changes in monetary policy. The results of innovation accounting also provide support to show that innovations in credit have impact on monetary policy. Granger causality analysis exhibits unidirectional causality from credit to monetary policy. The key implication of the findings is that credit to the private sector is an effective channel for monetary policy transmission in Nigeria. It is recommended therefore that monetary authorities in developing countries should consider credit as a major channel for implementing monetary policies.

Growth in India’s Service Sector: Implications of Structural Breaks

The paper is an attempt to identify the multiple structural breaks in India’s GDP, as well as its main growth enhancing sector i.e., services and its components and subsequently calculate the growth rate in different regimes. The paper uses the Bai-Perron (Econom 66(1), 1998, J Appl Econom 18(1), 2003) methodology of estimating multiple endogenous structural breaks (both pure and partial) in India’s service sector and its components and GDP during 1950–2010. Further, the paper uses the Boyce (Oxf Bull Econ Stat 48:385–391, 1986) methodology of estimating kinked exponential model of the growth rate, and further uses the Banerjee, Lumsdaine and Stock (J Business Econ Stat 10:271–287, 1992) test and the Lumsdaine and Pappel (Rev Econ Stat 79:212–218, 1997) test to check for the stationarity in the presence of structural breaks. The data used in this paper are the components of subsectors of services GDP and GDP at factor cost (with 2004–2005 as base). It is found that there is very little difference between the estimation of pure and partial structural break dates in India’s services GDP and its subsectors and four such breaks have been identified with help of Bai-Perron (Econom 66(1), 1998, J Appl Econom 18(1), 2003) methodology. The Boyce methodology of estimation of growth rates finds that mainly in the third and fourth regimes, the growth rates are highest in the subsectoral as well as at the aggregate levels of services GDP. The Banerjee, Lumsdaine and Stock test (J Business Econ Stat 10:271–287, 1992) and the extended Lumsdaine and Pappel test (Rev Econ Stat 79:212–218, 1997) cannot negate the presence of unit root in the data, irrespective of the presence of multiple structural breaks. The paper concludes with the identification of four broad regimes of growth of India’s services GDP and in the subsectors with possible explanations thereof.

Unit root modeling for trending stock market series

In this paper, we examine how the unit root for stock market series should be modeled. We employ the Narayan and Liu (2015) trend GARCH-based unit root and its variants in order to more carefully capture the inherent statistical behavior of the series. We utilize daily, weekly and monthly data covering nineteen countries across the regions of America, Asia and Europe. We find that the nature of data frequency matters for unit root testing when dealing with stock market data. Our evidence also suggests that stock market data is better modeled in the presence of structural breaks, conditional heteroscedasticity and time trend.