Detecting cointegration relationships under nonlinear models: Monte Carlo analysis and some applications

Testing for cointegration in the presence of nonlinear adjustments or structural breaks is important for examining the equilibrium relationship among economic variables. It is known that standard cointegration tests perform poorly when a cointegration relationship has nonlinear adjustments or structural breaks. However, it is not clear how some cointegration tests allowing for nonlinearity perform under other classes of nonlinear cointegration models. This paper investigates which cointegration tests help detect a cointegration relationship with nonlinear adjustments or structural breaks. Our Monte Carlo simulation results demonstrate that the cointegration test with threshold adjustment generally has better power performance under most cointegration relationships with nonlinearity. We also provide empirical applications to the money demand and term structure of the U.S. interest rates. The empirical results show that the test allowing for threshold adjustment provides strong evidence of the cointegration relationships of money demand and the term structure of interest rates. Copyright Springer-Verlag 2013