Recently Tanaka and Satchell [11] investigated the limiting properties of local maximizers of the Gaussian pseudo-likelihood function of a misspecified moving average model of order one in case the spectral density of the data process has a zero at frequency zero. We show that pseudo-maximum likelihood estimators in the narrower sense, that is, global maximizers of the Gaussian pseudo-likelihood function, may exhibit behavior drastically different from that of the local maximizers. Some general results on the limiting behavior of pseudo-maximum likelihood estimators in potentially misspecified ARMA models are also presented.

Using generalized functions of random variables and generalized Taylor series expansions, we provide quick demonstrations of the asymptotic theory for the LAD estimator in a regression model setting. The approach is justified by the smoothing that is delivered in the limit by the asymptotics, whereby the generalized functions are forced to appear as linear functionals wherein they become real valued. Models with fixed and random regressors, and autoregressions with infinite variance errors are studied. Some new analytic results are obtained including an asymptotic expansion of the distribution of the LAD estimator.

The exact likelihood function for a prototypal job search model is analyzed. The optimality condition implied by the dynamic programming framework is fully imposed. Using the optimality condition allows identification of an offer arrival probability separately from an offer acceptance probability. The estimation problem is nonstandard. The geometry of the likelihood function in finite samples is considered, along with asymptotic properties of the maximum likelihood estimator.

Impulse response functions from time series models are standard tools for analyzing the relationship between economic variables. The asymptotic distribution of orthogonalized impulse responses is derived under the assumption that finite order vector autoregressive (VAR) models are fitted to time series generated by possibly infinite order processes. The resulting asymptotic distributions of forecast error variance decompositions are also given.

Second-order asymptotic expansion approximations to the joint distributions of dynamic forecast errors and of static forecast errors in the stationary Gaussian pure AR(1) model are derived. The approximation to the dynamic forecast errors distribution can be expressed as a multivariate normal distribution with modified mean vector and covariance matrix, thus generalizing the results of Phillips [12]. However, the approximation to the static forecast errors distribution includes skewness and kurtosis terms. Thus the class of multivariate normal distributions does not provide as good approximations (in terms of error convergence rates) to the distributions of the static forecast errors as to the distributions of the dynamic forecast errors. These results cast some doubt on the appropriateness of model validation procedures, such as Chow tests, which use the static forecast errors and implicitly assume that these have a distribution which is well approximated by a multivariate normal.

A unified framework is established for the study of the computation of the distribution function from the characteristic function. A new approach to the proof of Gurland's and Gil-Pelaez's univariate inversion theorem is suggested. A multivariate inversion theorem is then derived using this technique.

This paper derives discrete models for estimating systems of both first- and second-order linear differential equations in which derivatives of the exogenous variables appear in addition to their levels.