Using the HEGY Procedure When Not All Roots Are Present

Empirical studies have shown little evidence to support the presence of all unit roots present in the Delta_4 filter in quarterly seasonal time series. This paper analyses the performance of the Hylleberg, Engle, Granger and Yoo [Journal of Econometrics (1990) Vol. 44, pp. 215-238] (HEGY) procedure when the roots under the null are not all present. We exploit the vector of quarters representation and cointegration relationship between the quarters when factors (1 - L), (1 + L), (1 + L-super-2), (1 - L-super-2) and (1 + L + L-super-2 + L-super-3) are a source of nonstationarity in a process in order to obtain the distribution of tests of the HEGY procedure when the underlying processes have a root at the zero, Nyquist frequency, two complex conjugates of frequency pi/2 and two combinations of the previous cases. We show both theoretically and through a Monte Carlo analysis that the t-ratios t and t and the F-type tests used in the HEGY procedure have the same distribution as under the null of a seasonal random walk when the root(s) is (are) present, although this is not the case for the t-ratio tests associated with unit roots at frequency pi/2. Copyright 2007 The Author Journal compilation 2007 Blackwell Publishing Ltd.