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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 08 January 2003
In this paper, functional limit theorems for general fractional processes are established under quite weak conditions. The results are then used to derive weak convergence of general nonstationary fractionally integrated processes and to characterize unit root distribution in a model with error being a fractional autoregressive moving average process or a nonstationary fractionally integrated process.The authors thank three referees and an associate editor for their detailed reading of this paper and valuable comments, which have led to this much improved version of the paper.
Consider a fractionally integrated autoregressive moving average(autoregressive fractionally integrated moving average) (ARFIMA) process {Xt} defined by

where m ≥ 0 is an integer and d ∈ (−½,½); B is a backshift operator and εt are independently and identically distributed (i.i.d.) random variables with zero mean and finite variance; φ(B) and θ(B) are polynomial functions of B with order p, and q, respectively, and both of them only have roots outside the unit circle, i.e., the ARMA(p,q) process ut is taken to be stationary and invertible. The fractional difference operator (1 − B)γ is defined by its Maclaurin series (by its binomial expansion, if γ is an integer):

If z < 0, Γ(z) is defined by the recursion formula zΓ(z) = Γ(z + 1).
Since model (1.1) was introduced by Granger and Joyeux (1980) and Hosking (1981), it has become very popular in applications. It nests the usual Box–Jenkins autoregressive integrated moving average (ARIMA) model and has an ability to capture both short-term dynamics and a wide variety of low-frequency behavior at the same time. Also, there is considerable evidence on the success of applying ARFIMA models to describe financial data such as forward premiums, interest rate differentials, and inflation rates. Illustrations can be found in survey and review papers of Robinson (1994) and Baillie (1996).
Because of their applications in economics and finance, ARFIMA processes have been studied quite extensively in recent years. In model (1.1), it is well known that the process is stationary and invertible when m = 0 (Hosking, 1981; Odaki, 1993); when m ≥ 1, the process is nonstationary. In particular, when d = 0 and m is an integer, the process becomes a usual unit root process. For estimate of the parameter d + m and other related statistical inferences, because the literature is rather extensive, we here only refer to Hosking (1984), Li and McLeod (1986), Fox and Taqqu (1986), Dahlhaus (1989), Giraitis and Surgailis (1990), Beran (1995), Beran, Bhansali, and Ocker (1998), and Tanaka (1999). For more results, see the references cited in these papers and a review book of Beran (1994).
As to the asymptotics of the ARFIMA processes, Sowell (1990) first derived a result that the partial sum process of a simple fractional process (i.e., m = 0, φ(B) ≡ θ(B) ≡ 1 in model (1.1)) converges weakly to a “type I” fractional Brownian motion1
A definition can be found later in this section. For a correction of Sowell's Theorem 2.2, see Theorem 2.1.1 of Liu (1998).
Motivated by characterizing unit root distribution in a more general model, this paper extends the weak convergence result given by Sowell (1990) to general fractional processes. Instead of assuming that the innovations ut in model (1.1) are an ARMA(p,q) process, we allow it to be a more general linear process. This means that this paper provides a unified treatment for previous studies on weak convergence for summable linear processes and fractional processes. The weak convergence results for summable linear processes can be found in Hannan (1979), Phillips and Solo (1992), and Chan and Tsay (1996). Our results are then used to derive functional limit theorems for general nonstationary fractionally integrated processes and to derive the limit distribution of the least square estimate (LSE) of the coefficient for a AR(1) model when the true coefficient is 1 (i.e., the true model has a unit root) and the error process is a general fractional process or a general nonstationary fractionally integrated process. These results improve essentially the related results in the literature (see Section 3 for more details), and they also provide a unified treatment for unit root tests with the error process being a summable linear process, a fractional process, or a nonstationary fractionally integrated process. The main results of this paper are given under quite weak moment conditions for the innovations εt. For example, weak convergence of general nonstationary fractionally integrated processes and nonstationary unit root distribution are derived whenever the innovations εt have finite second moment. Such a condition is the best possible moment condition in the literature and it is of interest from a theoretical point of view.
This paper is organized as follows. In the next section, we derive weak convergence of general fractional processes without proofs and compare them to related results in the literature. Applications of these results to general nonstationary fractionally integrated processes and testing for unit roots will be presented in Section 3. Finally in the Appendix, we give the proofs of the main theorems in Section 2.
We end this section with some notation. We denote limn→∞ an /bn = 1 by an ∼ bn; C,C1,… are for positive constants, which may take on different values in different places. The expression D[0,1] denotes the space of functions on [0,1] in which all elements are right continuous and have left-hand limits, endowed with the Skorohod topology (see Billingsley, 1968, p. 111). Convergence in distribution and weak convergence of probability measures on D[0,1] are denoted by →d and ⇒, respectively. Finally, we define type I fractional Brownian motions with −½ < d < ½ on D[0,1] as follows:

where W(s) is a standard Brownian motion and

Clearly, Wd(t) is a self-similar Gaussian process with covariance

A more general definition of fractional Brownian motions can be found in Mandelbrot and Van Ness (1968), Samorodnitsky and Taqqu (1994), and Marinucci and Robinson (1999).
From here on, we discuss the following general ARFIMA process Xt defined by

where m ≥ 0 is an integer and d ∈ (−½,½); (1 − B)d is defined by (1.2); εj,j = 0,±1,… are i.i.d. random variables with Eε0 = 0, and {ψj,j ≥ 0} is a sequence of real numbers to be specified later.
The two theorems in this section derive results on weak convergence of general stationary fractional processes. They provide a unified treatment for the cases of fractional processes and summable linear processes.
THEOREM 2.1. Let Xj satisfy (2.1) with m = 0 and let ψj,j ≥ 0, satisfy

Assume that Eε02 < ∞. Then, for 0 ≤ d < ½,

where κ2(d) = [bψ2Eε02Γ(1 − 2d)]/(1 + 2d)Γ(1 + d)Γ(1 − d) and Wd(t) is a type I fractional Brownian motion on D[0,1].
If, in addition, E|ε0|(2+δ)/(1+2d) < ∞, where δ > 0, then (2.3) still holds for −½ < d < 0.
For 0 ≤ d < ½, Theorem 2.1 gives the result under the best possible moment condition Eε02 < ∞. If there is a slightly stronger restriction on ψk, the moment condition in Theorem 2.1 for −½ < d < 0 can be weakened to E|ε0|2/(1+2d) < ∞. Explicitly, we have the following theorem.
THEOREM 2.2. Let Xj satisfy (2.1) with m = 0 and let ψj,j ≥ 0, satisfy

Assume that E|ε0|max{22/(1+2d)} < ∞. Then (2.3) holds for d ∈ (−½,½).
The proofs of Theorems 2.1 and 2.2 are given in the Appendix.
If ut is a process satisfying φ(B)ut = θ(B)εt, where polynomials φ(B) and θ(B) with order p and q, respectively, have only roots outside the unit circle, Theorem 3.1.1.1 of Brockwell and Davis (1987, p. 85) implies that

with |ψk| ≤ Ca−k,k ≥ 0, where a > 1 and

. Therefore, the following corollary is a direct consequence of Theorem 2.2.
COROLLARY 2.1. Let Xj satisfy (1.1) with m = 0. If E|ε0|max{22/(1+2d)} < ∞, then (2.3) follows with bψ = θ(1)/φ(1) for d ∈ (−½,½).
We next give some remarks that compare our results to those in the literature.
Remark 2.1. If φ(B) ≡ θ(B) ≡ 1 in model (1.1), Corollary 2.1 reduces to Theorem 2.2 of Sowell (1990), where the author derives (2.3) provided E|εt|r < ∞ for r ≥ max{4,−8d/(1 + 2d)}. If d = 0, then

. In this case κ2(0) = bψ2Eε02 and W0(t) is a standard Brownian motion on D[0,1] . Thus, Hannan's result (1979) becomes a special case of Theorem 2.1. Theorem 3.1.4 of Phillips and Solo (1992) and Theorem 2.2.5 of Chan and Tsay (1996) also give similar results but impose more restrictions on ψj. For further results on weak convergence of linear processes, refer to Wang, Lin, and Gulati (2002).
Remark 2.2. Davydov (1970) and the later work by Gorodetskii (1977), Taqqu (1975), Avram and Taqqu (1987), and Mielniczuk (1997) give results on the functional limit theorem for linear process with square summable weights. Theorems 2.1 and 2.2 derive essentially weak convergence of an infinite weighted function of a linear process, i.e., a process such as

. We note that this infinite weighted function is difficult to rewrite as a linear process with explicit coefficients and therefore the results in the papers cited previously can not be applied directly to our theorems. On the other hand, even in the special case where ψ0 = 1 and ψk = 0,k ≥ 1, Theorems 2.1 and 2.2 are not a direct consequence of the papers cited earlier as their results are held under a higher moment condition for innovations εk, in particular, in the case that −½ < d < 0.
Remark 2.3. For the results on functional limit theorems for fractional processes defined by (2.1) with other dependent innovations instead of a linear process ut, refer to Davidson and Jong (2000) and Wang, Lin, and Gulati (2001).
In this section, we apply the main results presented in Section 2 to several well-known examples, namely, to derive functional limit theorems for general nonstationary fractionally integrated processes and fractional unit root distributions. These have been studied by various authors in recent years. As will be seen later, the applications of Theorems 2.1 and 2.2 to the related statistics can lead to better results under weaker conditions.
In previous research, the functional limit theorem for general nonstationary fractionally integrated processes has been discussed in a very general framework by Chan and Terrin (1995) under the assumption that ut defined in (2.1) is a class of stationary Gaussian processes. The result of Chan and Terrin (1995) extends the results of Chan and Wei (1988), Parks and Phillips (1988, 1989), and Sims, Stock, and Watson (1990) from the domain of integer m's (i.e., d = 0) to fractional d + m's. More recently, Liu (1998) has derived a functional limit theorem for simple nonstationary fractionally integrated processes (i.e., the process Xt defined by (2.1) with m ≥ 1 and ut = εt) provided E|εt|r < ∞ for r ≥ max{4,−8d/(1 + 2d)}. Theorem 3.1, which follows gives an essential improvement of the results cited previously.
For convenience, we introduce the following conditions.
Condition A. ψj,j ≥ 0 satisfy (2.2) and E|ε0|p < ∞, where p = 2, for 0 ≤ d < ½; p = (2 + δ)/(1 + 2d) < ∞,δ > 0, for −½ < d < 0.
Condition B. ψj,j ≥ 0 satisfy (2.4) and E|ε0|max{22/(1+2d)} < ∞.
THEOREM 3.1. Let Xj satisfy (2.1) with m ≥ 1. Let Condition A or Condition B hold. Then, for 0 ≤ t ≤ 1,



where κ(d), Wd(t) are defined as in Theorem 2.1 and

Proof. We first assume m = 1. Put

By definition of the lag operator, we have that

and

. Now Theorems 2.1 and 2.2 imply that, for 0 ≤ t ≤ 1,

and hence (3.1) holds. By using (3.1) and the continuous mapping theorem, we obtain that

The relations (3.2) and (3.3) thus hold true for m = 1.
For general m ≥ 2, Theorem 3.1 follows by induction, and details are omitted. This completes the proof of Theorem 3.1. █
We next consider another application of our main results.
Let {yt} be a stochastic process generated according to

where y0 = 0 and {Xt} is a sequence of errors. Denote the LSE of α by

. We have that

For the case where model (3.6) has a unit root (i.e., the null hypothesis α = 1 holds), the limit distribution of

was first considered by Dickey and Fuller (1979) under the assumption that Xt are i.i.d. random variables. Since then, considerable attention has been focused on weakening the i.i.d. assumption. Here we only cite Said and Dickey (1984), Phillips (1987), Hall (1989), and Chan and Tsay (1996). In these papers, the unit root distribution is obtained but only for the situation where the error process is a short memory process, such as an ARMA process. For similar results, more references can be found in Phillips and Xiao (1998), where the authors present a survey of unit root theory with an emphasis on testing principles and recent developments.
On weakening the assumption of i.i.d. errors, another important contribution is made by Sowell (1990). By assuming that the error process is a simple fractional process (i.e., ψ0 = 1,ψj = 0, j ≥ 1, and m = 0 in model (2.1)), Sowell (1990) establishes a well-known fractional unit root distribution2
The fractional Brownian motion used as limiting process is insufficiently defined in Sowell (1990). For a correction of Sowell's Theorem 3.1, see Marinucci and Robinson (2000). Also, it can be found in Theorem 3.2 which follows.
In Theorem 3.2, which follows, as an application of Theorems 2.1, 2.2, and 3.1, we derive the limit distribution of

while the error process Xt satisfies (2.1). Under quite weak moment conditions, this result provides a unified treatment of the previously most cited results. In particular, we point out that the limit distribution of

is free to the choice of the weights ψk of the ut in model (2.1) if d + m > 0.
THEOREM 3.2. Let Xt satisfy (2.1) with m ≥ 0 and yt satisfy model (3.6). Let Condition A or Condition B hold.
(a) If m ≥ 1 or m = 0 and 0 < d < ½, then

where Wd,m is defined as in Theorem 3.1.
(b) If m = 0 and d = 0, then

where

.
(c) If m = 0 and d ∈ (−½,0), then

where κ2(d) is defined as in Theorem 2.1 and

Proof. By noting

we can rewrite

as

Because

, where Xj satisfy (2.1), it follows from Theorem 3.1 that



Because of (3.14), it is clear that if m ≥ 1, then

On the other hand, if m = 0 in (2.1), it follows from Lemma 3.3 in the Appendix that {Xt,t ≥ 1} is a stationary linear process with

Because stationary linear processes are ergodic, by using the stationary ergodic theorem (see Stout, 1974, p. 181), we obtain that

In particular, we point out that

. Because (3.16) implies (3.15) when m = 0 and 0 < d < ½, the relation (3.8) follows immediately from (3.11)–(3.13), (3.15), (3.16) and the continuous mapping theorem.
Similarly, the relation (3.9) and (3.10) follow easily from (3.11)–(3.13), (3.16), and the fact that Wd,1(s) = Wd(s) and W0(s) = W(s). This completes the proof of Theorem 3.2. █
We first give several preliminary lemmas, which are also interesting in their own right.
Let {υj,j = 0,±1,…} be a sequence of random variables, {an,k,k = 0,±1,±2,…} be a triangular array of constants, and

. For reading convenience, we give the following basic assumptions.
Assumption 1. The sequence {υj2} is uniformly integrable.
Assumption 2.

is the σ-field of events generated by {υi, i ≤ j}.
Assumption 3. 0 < An < ∞ for each fixed n ≥ 1, and as n → ∞, An → ∞ and maxk|an,k|/An → 0.
Assumption 4. There exists a positive constant C such that

LEMMA 3.1. Let Assumptions 1–4 hold,

. Then, as n → ∞,

where

.
Proof. Because

, there exists a sequence of positive increasing constants λn such that

For this λn, we rewrite

By a simple calculation, to prove (A.2), it suffices to show that


and

Note that relation (A.4) also implies that

is well defined almost surely.
We next give the proofs of (A.4)–(A.6). It can be easily shown (cf. Chow, 1965) that

By Hölder's inequality, it follows from (A.3) and (A.7) that

This implies (A.4) because An → ∞ from Assumption 3.
To prove (A.5) and (A.6), put

We have that for each fixed n ≥ 1 (recalling that Ynj are well defined),


and similar to (A.7)

Because of (A.9)–(A.11) and Assumptions 1–3, tracing the proof of Lemma 3.1 given in Robinson (1997), (A.5) and (A.6) hold if we prove, as n → ∞,

Because Hölder's inequality implies that for each n ≥ 1,i,j ≥ 0,

elementary calculation shows that

Write

It follows that

In view of Assumptions 3 and 4, we have ηn → ∞ and

Taking account of the following inequality:

maxk|an,k| = An /ηn2, and Assumption 4, we have
Therefore, using (A.13)–(A.15), we obtain that

Now, (A.12) follows immediately from (A.16) and

This also completes the proof of Lemma 3.1. █
LEMMA 3.2. Let ck = Γ(d + k)/Γ(d)Γ(k + 1) for k ≥ 0 and ck = 0 for k < 0, where −½ < d < ½. Then,




for 0 ≤ s < t ≤ 1.
Proof. For the proof of (A.17), see Theorem 1 in Hosking (1981). The proof of (A.18) follows easily from (A.17). By noting Γ(z + 1) = zΓ(z) for all z, we have that for 1 ≤ n ≤ k and d ∈ (−½,½),
which implies (A.19).
To prove (A.20), let ζk,k = 0,±1,±2,…, be i.i.d. N(0,1) random variables and

. Because ck = 0 for k < 0 and hence

clearly we have that for 0 ≤ s < t ≤ 1

By noting that Yj,j ≥ 1 are stationary random variables, using Theorem 2.1 of Sowell (1990), we obtain

where we use the estimate: ([nt] − [ns])/n ∼ t − s. Thus (A.20) follows. This also completes the proof of Lemma 3.2. █
LEMMA 3.3. Let Xt satisfy (2.1) with m = 0 and ψj,j ≥ 0 satisfy (2.2). If Eε02 < ∞, then



Proof of Lemma 3.3. Writing Xt = Ψ(B)εt, we have Ψ(z) = (1 − z)dψ(z), where

, similar to the proof of Theorem 2 part (a) given by Hosking (1981), the power series expansion of Ψ(z) converges for all |z| ≤ 1 when d < ½. Thus, if −½ < d < ½, we have

Now (A.21) follows from the binomial expansion of (1 − z)d (cf. Hosking, 1981).
As is well-known (e.g., see Hosking, 1981), {Zt,t ≥ 1} is a strictly stationary random sequence with 0 mean. It follows from Theorem 3.5.3 of Stout (1974, p. 170) that

has the same properties as Zt. To prove (A.22), let fz(.) be a spectral density of {Zt}. According to Theorem 12.4.1 in Brockwell and Davis (1987, p. 466),

This, together with the second equality of (A.21) and (4.4.3) in Brockwell and Davis (1987, p. 121), shows that {Xt} has a spectral density fX(.) and fX(λ) = |ψ(eiλ)|2fZ(λ), where

. In terms of

, we obtain

If d = 0, the result is obvious since

. The proof of Lemma 3.3 is complete. █
After these preliminaries, we now give the proof of the main results.
Proof of Theorem 2.1. If d = 0, Xt reduces to summable linear processes. In this case, (2.3) follows from Hannan (1979). So, we assume that d ≠ 0 in the sequel. Put
In view of part (b) of Lemma 3.3, Xt is a strictly stationary random sequence with zero mean. Now, using the usual method in the proof of weak convergence for stationary random sequence (cf. Taqqu, 1975, Theorem 2.1), it suffices to show that
(i) for each fixed l ≥ 1 and real constants 0 < t1 ≠ t2 ≠···≠ tl ≤ 1,

where τ1,τ2,…,τl are any real constants and

;
(ii) for some a > 1/(1 + 2d),

We first prove part (i). From part (a) of Lemma 3.3, we have that

and ck are defined as in Lemma 3.2. Let mi = [nti],i = 1,…,l. It follows from (A.25) that

where, by an elementary calculation (recalling ck = 0 if k < 0),

To apply Lemma 3.1 to (A.26), we first show that

In fact, (A.28) follows immediately from Lemma 3.2 (see (A.20)) and

From Lemma 3.2 (i.e., (A.17)–(A.19)), on the other hand, we have that for d ≠ 0,

In view of (A.28)–(A.30), conditions of Lemma 3.1 hold for bn,k defined in (A.26) and (A.27). By applying (A.26), (A.28), and Lemma 3.1, we obtain that


The relation (A.31), together with (A.26) and (A.32), implies (A.23). This completes the proof of part (i).
We next prove part (ii). By applying (A.26) and (A.27) with l = τ1 = t1 = 1, we obtain that
with

. Furthermore, it follows from (A.32) that
Thus the first relation of (A.24) holds.
If 0 < d < ½, the second relation of (A.24) is obvious by letting a = 1. To establish the second relation of (A.24) for −½ < d < 0, we let 2a = (2 + δ)/(1 + 2d). Obviously, we have that a > 1/(1 + 2d) > 1 and E|ε0|2a < ∞ when d < 0. By the Marcinkiewicz–Zygmund inequality (also Burkholder's inequality; see Hall and Heyde, 1980, p. 23) and Hölder's inequality, there exists a constant Ca depending only on a such that for all integers j and s ≤ h,

Because of (A.33) and (A.34), it follows from the Fatou lemma that for all j,

Hence, by Hölder's inequality again, we obtain that

which implies the desired result. This also completes the proof of Theorem 2.1. █
Proof of Theorem 2.2. We only need to consider the case where −½ < d < 0. In this case, because εk are i.i.d. random variables with Eε0 = 0 and E|ε0|2/(1+2d) < ∞, by applying Komlós, Major, and Tusnády (1975, 1976) (also see Csörgõ and Horváth, 1993 Corollary 1.1), on a suitable probability space
we can construct ηk,k = 0,±1,±2,…, which are i.i.d. N(0,Eε02) random variables such that as n → ∞


Let Yt satisfy

where −½ < d < 0 and ψk satisfies (2.4). Because ηk are i.i.d. N(0,Eε02), by applying Theorem 2.1, we have that, for 0 ≤ t ≤ 1,

In view of (A.37) and Theorem 1.4.1 of Billingsley (1968), to prove Theorem 2.2, it suffices to show that

where oP(.) denotes convergence in probability.
By applying part (a) of Lemma 3.3, for any m ≥ 1, we can write

where ck = Γ(d + k)/Γ(d)Γ(k + 1) for k ≥ 0 and ck = 0 for k < 0;

Clearly, (A.38) follows if

We next prove (A.40). Write
By noting c0 = 0 and |ck| ≤ Ckd−1 for k ≥ 1 (see Lemma 3.2), it can be easily shown that for all l ≥ s ≥ 0 and j ≥ 1,

Therefore, it follows that

Similarly, we obtain that

In view of (2.4), (A.41), (A.42), and d < 0, Markov's inequity implies that (A.40) holds for j = 1 and j = 4.
On the other hand, it follows from (A.35) and (A.36) that

This implies that (A.40) holds for j = 2.
We now prove (A.40) for j = 3. For convenience, write

. We have that
Clearly, it follows that

Recalling (A.36), |ck| ≤ Ckd−1, and d < 0, we get that

Similarly, we have

On the other hand, by applying Lemma 3.2, we know that (noting m ≤ k − s)
Therefore, it follows from (A.36) that (recalling d < 0)
In view of (A.43)–(A.47), we have that
This implies (A.40) for j = 3. This also completes the proof of Theorem 2.2. █