Asymptotic Properties of QML Estimators for VARMA Models with Time-Dependent Coefficients

This paper is about vector autoregressive-moving average (VARMA) models with time-dependent coefficients to represent non-stationary time series. Contrary to other papers in the univariate case, the coefficients depend on time but not on the series’ length n. Under appropriate assumptions, it is shown that a Gaussian quasi-maximum likelihood estimator is almost surely consistent and asymptotically normal. The theoretical results are illustrated by means of two examples of bivariate processes. It is shown that the assumptions underly- ing the theoretical results apply. In the second example the innovations are marginally heteroscedastic with a correlation ranging from −0.8 to 0.8. In the two examples, the asymptotic information matrix is obtained in the Gaussian case. Finally, the finite-sample behavior is checked via a Monte Carlo simulation study for n from 25 to 400. The results confirm the validity of the asymptotic properties even for short series and the asymptotic information matrix deduced from the theory.