This paper considers an empirical likelihood method to estimate the parameters of the quantile regression (QR) models and to construct confidence regions that are accurate in finite samples. To achieve the higher order refinements, we smooth the estimating equations for the empirical likelihood. We show that the smoothed empirical likelihood estimator is first-order asymptotically equivalent to the standard QR estimator and establish that confidence regions based on the smoothed empirical likelihood ratio have coverage errors of order n−1 and may be Bartlett corrected to produce regions with errors of order n−2, where n denotes the sample size. Our result is an extension of the previous result of Chen and Hall (1993, Annals of Statistics 21, 1166–1181) to the regression context. Monte Carlo experiments suggest that the smoothed empirical likelihood confidence regions may be more accurate in small samples than the confidence regions that can be constructed from the smoothed bootstrap method recently suggested by Horowitz (1998, Econometrica 66, 1327–1351).I thank the co-editor Bruce Hansen and anonymous referees for valuable suggestions and comments. I also thank Song X. Chen, Joel Horowitz, Yuichi Kitamura, Oliver Linton, Whitney Newey, Peter Phillips, and Richard Smith for helpful comments. Parts of this paper were written while I was visiting the Cowles Foundation at Yale University, whose hospitality is gratefully acknowledged. Young-Hyun Cho has provided excellent research assistance. This work was supported by the Korea Research Foundation grant KRF 2003-041-B00072.

We make three contributions to using the variance ratio statistic at large horizons. Allowing for general heteroskedasticity in the data, we obtain the asymptotic distribution of the statistic when the horizon k is increasing with the sample size n but at a slower rate so that k/n → 0. The test is shown to be consistent against a variety of relevant mean reverting alternatives when k/n → 0. This is in contrast to the case when k/n → δ > 0, where the statistic has been recently shown to be inconsistent against such alternatives. Second, we provide and justify a simple power transformation of the statistic that yields almost perfectly normally distributed statistics in finite samples, solving the well-known right skewness problem. Third, we provide a more powerful way of pooling information from different horizons to test for mean reverting alternatives. Monte Carlo simulations illustrate the theoretical improvements provided.The authors thank Bruce Hansen and the referees for useful suggestions and comments that greatly improved the paper. The first author's research was supported by NSF grant DMS-0306726.

The issue of identification of covariance structures, which arises in a number of different contexts, has been so far linked to conditions on the true parameters to be estimated. In this paper, this limitation is removed.

As done by Johansen (1995, Journal of Econometrics 69, 112–132) in the context of linear models, the present paper provides necessary and sufficient conditions for the identification of a covariance structure that depends only on the constraints and can therefore be checked independently of estimated parameters.

A structure condition is developed, which only depends on the structure of the constraints. It is shown that this condition, if coupled with the familiar order condition, provides a sufficient condition for identification. In practice, because the structure condition holds if and only if a certain matrix, constructed from the constraint matrices, is invertible, automatic software checking for identification is feasible even for large-scale systems.

Most of the paper focuses on structural vector autoregressions, but extensions to other statistical models are also briefly discussed.I thank all the participants at the meeting held in Pavia on June 11, 2004, in honor of Carlo Giannini for their comments; it goes without saying that Carlo himself provided not only acute observations on the day but also the main inspiration for this piece of work. Sadly, Carlo passed away on September 11, 2004, and this paper is dedicated to his memory. Pär Österholm spotted several mistakes in an earlier version and helped me clarify some implementation details. Thanks are also due to Gianni Amisano, Bruce Hansen, Giulio Palomba, Paolo Paruolo, and two anonymous referees. The usual disclaimer obviously applies.

In applied work economists often seek to relate a given response variable y to some causal parameter μ* associated with it. This parameter usually represents a summarization based on some explanatory variables of the distribution of y, such as a regression function, and treating it as a conditional expectation is central to its identification and estimation. However, the interpretation of μ* as a conditional expectation breaks down if some or all of the explanatory variables are endogenous. This is not a problem when μ* is modeled as a parametric function of explanatory variables because it is well known how instrumental variables techniques can be used to identify and estimate μ*. In contrast, handling endogenous regressors in nonparametric models, where μ* is regarded as fully unknown, presents difficult theoretical and practical challenges. In this paper we consider an endogenous nonparametric model based on a conditional moment restriction. We investigate identification-related properties of this model when the unknown function μ* belongs to a linear space. We also investigate underidentification of μ* along with the identification of its linear functionals. Several examples are provided to develop intuition about identification and estimation for endogenous nonparametric regression and related models.We thank Jeff Wooldridge and two anonymous referees for comments that greatly improved this paper.

This paper proposes a new testing procedure to detect the presence of a cointegrating relationship that follows a globally stationary smooth transition process. In the context of nonlinear smooth transition error correction models (ECMs) we provide two simple operational versions of the tests. First, we obtain the associated nonlinear ECM-based tests. Second, we derive the nonlinear analogue of the residual-based test for cointegration in linear models. We derive the asymptotic distributions of the proposed tests. Monte Carlo simulation exercises confirm that our proposed tests have much better power than the linear counterparts against the alternative of a globally stationary nonlinear cointegrating process. In an application to the price-dividend relationship, our test is able to find cointegration, whereas the linear-based tests fail to do so.We are grateful to an associate editor, two anonymous referees, Richard Baillie, In Choi, Atanas Christev, Hira Koul, Richard Harris, Cheng Hsiao, Changjin Kim, Joon Park, Peter Schmidt, Yoonjae Whang, Jeff Wooldridge, and seminar participants at University of Edinburgh, Heriot-Watt University, Korea University, University of Leeds, Michigan State University, University of Newcastle, and Sungkunkwan University for their helpful comments. Partial financial support from the ESRC (grant R000223399) is gratefully acknowledged. The usual disclaimer applies.

We investigate the convergence in distribution of integrals of stochastic processes satisfying a functional limit theorem. We allow a large class of continuous Gaussian processes in the limit. Depending on the continuity properties of the underlying process, local Lebesgue or Riemann integrability is required.We are grateful to the referees and Benedikt Pötscher for their helpful and constructive comments. The research of the first author was partially supported by OTKA grants T37668 and T43037 and NSF-OTKA grant INT-0223262. The research of the second author was partially supported by NATO grant PST.EAP.CLG 980599 and NSF-OTKA grant INT-0223262.

We propose a closed-form estimator for the linear GARCH(1,1) model. The estimator has the advantage over the often used quasi-maximum likelihood estimator (QMLE) that it can be easily implemented and does not require the use of any numerical optimization procedures or the choice of initial values of the conditional variance process. We derive the asymptotic properties of the estimator, showing T(κ−1)/κ-consistency for some κ ∈ (1,2) when the fourth moment exists and -asymptotic normality when the eighth moment exists. We demonstrate that a finite number of Newton–Raphson iterations using our estimator as starting point will yield asymptotically the same distribution as the QMLE when the fourth moment exists. A simulation study confirms our theoretical results.The first author's research was supported by the Shoemaker Foundation. The second author's research was supported by the Economic and Social Science Research Council of the United Kingdom.

The distributions of products and ratios of random variables are of interest in many areas of the sciences. In this note, the exact distributions of the product XY and the ratio X/Y are derived when X and Y are gamma and Weibull random variables distributed independently of each other.The authors thank the referee and the editor for carefully reading the paper and for their help in improving the paper.

I am delighted to announce the following Econometric Theory Awards for 2006.