Portmanteau-type test for unit root with heavy-tailed noise

A portmanteau-type statistic based on sample covariance is proposed to test for the existence of the unit-root of an autoregressive model under a heavy-tailed linear noise, where the noise ɛ t = ∑ j = 0 ∞ d j η t − j and { η t } is a sequence of i.i.d. innovations belonging to the domain of attraction of an α -stable distribution for some α ∈ ( 0 , 2 ) . The proposed procedure is nonparametric and easy to implement. Under certain regular assumptions, the limit distribution of the statistics is shown to be a functional of a standard stable distribution. Further, the good finite sample studies show that the new test outperforms PP, DF and ADF tests in size and power. Applications to the daily world crude oil price and 3-month AA financial commercial paper rate are also given to illustrate the performance of the new test.