Statistical inference for some discrete-valued time series

Abstract

Some problems of' statistical inference for discrete-valued time series are investigated in this study. New statistical theories and methods are developed which may aid us in gaining more insight into the understanding of discrete-valued time series data.

The first part is concerned with the measurement of the serial dependence of binary time series. In early studies the classical autocorrelation function was used, which, however, may not be an effective and informative means of revealing the dependence feature of a binary time series. Recently, the autopersistence function has been proposed as an alternative to the autocorrelation function for binary time series. The theoretical autopersistence functions and their sample analogues, the autopersistence graphs, are studied within a binary autoregressive model. Some properties of the autopcrsistencc functions and the asymptotic properties of the autopersistence graphs are discussed, justifying that the antopersistence graphs can be used to assess the dependence feature.

Besides binary time series, intcger-vall1ed time series arc perhaps the most commonly seen discrete-valued time series. A generalization of the Poisson autoregression model for non-negative integer-valued time series is proposed by imposing an additional threshold structure on the latent mean process of the Poisson autoregression. The geometric ergodicity of the threshold Poisson autoregression with perburbations in the latent mean process and the stochastic stability of the threshold Poisson autoregression are obtained. The maximum likelihood estimator for the parameters is discussed and the conditions for its consistency and asymptotic normally are given as well.

Furthermore, there is an increasing need for models of integer-valued time series which can accommodate series with negative observations and dependence structure more complicated than that of an autoregression or a moving average. In this regard, an integer-valued autoregressive moving average process induced by the so-called signed thinning operator is proposed. The first-order model is studied in detail. The conditions for the existence of stationary solution and the existence of finite moments are discussed under general assumptions. Under some further assumptions about the signed thinning operators and the distribution of the innovation, a moment-based estimator for the parameters is proposed, whose consistency and asymptotic normality are also proved. The problem of conducting one-step-ahead forecast is also considered based on hidden Markov chain theory.

Simulation studies arc conducted to demonstrate the validity of the theories and methods established above. Real data analysis such as the annual counts of major earthquakes data are also presented to show their potential usefulness in applications.