Testing for Evidence of Nonlinear Structure in Australian Real Estate Market Returns

In this paper we have tested for evidence of nonlinear structure in Australian asset returns including those of real estate and investment trusts, stock market indicies and returns for listed real estate companies. While some of our test procedures are designed to test for nonlinear deterministic (chaotic) structure against a random alternative, others have power against nonlinear stochastic structure. If nonlinear deterministic and random walk models are not appropriate to explain asset returns behaviour, then stochastic nonlinearity seems like a logical alternative. The results from our study lead us to that conclusion.