Testing for persistence in the error component model : a one-sided approach

Abstract

This paper proposes new simple testing procedures for the joint null hypothesis of absence of persistent e®ects in the form of random e®ects and ¯rst order serial cor- relation in the error component model. The fact that the presence of random e®ects is clearly of a one-sided nature, together with the fact that in many empirical ap- plications researchers worry about positive serial correlation leaves room for a power gain that arises from restricting the parameter space under the alternative hypothesis, compared to existing procedures that allow for two-sided alternatives. A Monte Carlo experiment shows that the proposed statistics have good size and power performance in very small samples like those typically used in applied work in panel data. An empirical example illustrates the usefulness of the proposed statistics.