A sign test for unit roots in a seasonal MTAR model

Abstract

This study suggests a new method for testing seasonal unit roots in a momentum threshold autoregressive (MTAR) process. This sign test is robust against heteroscedastic or heavy tailed errors and is invariant to monotone data transformation. The proposed test is a seasonal extension of the sign test of Park and Shin (2006). In the case of partial seasonal unit root in an MTAR model, a Monte-Carlo study shows that the proposed test ha's better power than the seasonal sign test developed for AR model.