Testing for Serial Correlation: Generalized Andrews- Ploberger Tests

N. E. Savin Department of Economics, University of Iowa, Iowa City, IA 52242. August, 2008 (forthcoming in Journal of Business and Economic Statistics) ABSTRACT This paper considers testing the null hypothesis that a times series is uncorrelated when the time series is uncorrelated but statistically dependent. This case is of interest in economic and finance applications. The GARCH (1, 1) model is a leading example of a model that generates serially uncorrelated but statistically dependent data. The tests of serial correlation introduced by Andrews and Ploberger (1996, hereafter AP) are generalized for the purpose of testing the null. The rationale for generalizing the AP tests is that they have attractive properties for case for which they were originally designed: They are consistent against all non-white noise alternatives and have good all-round power against nonseasonal alternatives compared to several widely used tests in the literature. These properties are inherited by the generalized AP tests.