On a new robust method of inference for general time series models

Abstract: In this article, we propose a novel logistic quasi-maximum likelihood estimation (LQMLE) for general parametric time series models. Compared to the classical Gaussian QMLE and existing robust estimations, it enjoys many distinctive advantages, such as robustness in respect of distributional misspecification and heavy-tailedness of the innovation, more resiliency to outliers, smoothness and strict concavity of the log logistic quasi-likelihood function, and boundedness of the influence function among others. Under some mild conditions, we establish the strong consistency and asymptotic normality of the LQMLE. Moreover, we propose a new and vital parameter identifiability condition to ensure desirable asymptotics of the LQMLE. Further, based on the LQMLE, we consider the Wald test and the Lagrange multiplier test for the unknown parameters, and derive the limiting distributions of the corresponding test statistics. The applicability of our methodology is demonstrated by several time series models, including DAR, GARCH, ARMA-GARCH, DTARMACH, and EXPAR. Numerical simulation studies are carried out to assess the finite-sample performance of our methodology, and an empirical example is analyzed to illustrate its usefulness.