1) This document discusses time series forecasting of the 3-month US Treasury rate from 1960-2011.
2) Descriptive statistics show the data is positively skewed and not normally distributed. The time series plot shows an increasing trend over time with sudden peaks and decreases.
3) Autocorrelation decreases with lag, and the first lag is significant in the partial autocorrelation function, indicating the series is not stationary. The augmented Dickey-Fuller test confirms the series is stationary after first differencing.
2. DATA SOURCE
? Tbill – 3-month US Treasury rate (source: Board of Governors of the Federal
Reserve)
? monthly data from January 1960-December 2011.
3. Descriptive Statistics
? varies between 226 (min) and 1813.5(max) with the mean of 520.8.
The median value is 387.05 and data seems positively skewed
(Skewness 2.22)
? JB(JB=629.8) test and p value is significant(p = 0.00) .Thus it
confirms that data is not normally distributed.
0
10
20
30
40
50
60
70
80
0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16
Series: TBILL
Sample 1960M01 2011M12
Observations 624
Mean 5.127516
Median 4.960000
Maximum 16.30000
Minimum 0.010000
Std. Dev. 2.957858
Skewness 0.808674
Kurtosis 4.365448
Jarque-Bera 116.4868
Probability 0.000000
4. Time series plot
? According to the time series plot in e-views (fig 2) we can see the
increasing trend over the years. Also we can see some sudden peaks
and suddden decrements. These sudden fluctuations indicates the
volatility nature of data. Anyway it is better to check ACF and PACF
to further analysis
0
4
8
12
16
20
60 65 70 75 80 85 90 95 00 05 10
TBILL
5. Correlagram
According to the ACF we can see that auto correlation decreases with
the lag increases In PACF only first lag is significant. By looking at ACF
we can simply say that original series is not stationary. Anyway we can
confirm further by using Dicky Fuller test as well to check the stationary
nature in original series
6. Unit Root Test
The augmented Dickey-
Fuller test confirms that
null hypothesis fails that
? not equal to 0. Thus
model will be stationary
According to the above
output of DF test for 1st
difference confirms that
1st difference of the
series is stationary at
5% of level (p=0.00).
Original Series
First Difference Series
7. Mean Model
ccording to the first
difference series ACF we
can see the 1st lag ACF is
significance and others get
decaying. In PACF also can
see the 1st lag and 2nd lag
PACF is significance and
others get decaying
Based on this we can try MA
or AR model for the first
difference series
9. Testing for ‘ARCH effects’
-4
-2
0
2
4
-6
-4
-2
0
2
4
65 70 75 80 85 90 95 00 05 10
Residual Actual Fitted
When we plotted the residuals
we can see that clustering
volatility, which means large
fluctuations tend to be
followed by large fluctuations,
of either sign, and small
fluctuations tend to be
followed by small fluctuations.
Further we can confirm this by
using squared residuals or
ARCH LM test.
10. Testing for ‘ARCH effects’contd.
ACF of Squared
residuals of confrims
that availability of
ARCH effect. All
tested lags seems
significant and null
hypothesis rejected.
(H0- first m lags of
ACF of squared
residuals series are
equal to zero vs H1-
first m lags of ACF of
squared residuals
series are not equal to
zero).
the Q statistics of tested lags are
significant, which confirms serial
correlation in the residuals.
11. Testing for ‘ARCH effects’contd
Since TR? =67.76 > ?1,0.05
2
= 3.8415 and p=0.00 we reject the
null hypothesis (H0- No ARCH Effect vs H1- There is ARCH
effect) and conclude that there is statistically significant
ARCH effects in the errors of AR(1) model. Therefore, we have
to model the exchange rate series by using ARCH/GARCH
type models
12. Model Selection
? An available method is to observe the PACF of squared returns or
squared residuals based on the mean model. If PACF cuts off at lag
value q, we can guess the ARCH(q)model is appropriate. Then we
can use Garch function to check the AICs of the ARCH (q), ARCH
(q-1),ARCH (q+1)models. If the AIC of the ARCH (q) model is the
smallest, then the model can be used to fit the data.