In linear time series analysis, the incorporation of the moving-average term in autoregressive models yields parsimony while retaining flexibility; in particular, the first order autoregressive moving-average model, ARMA(1,1) is notable since it retains a good approximating capability with just two parameters. In the same spirit, we assess empirically whether a similar result holds for threshold processes. First, we show that the first order threshold autoregressive moving-average process, TARMA(1,1) exhibits complex, high-dimensional, behaviour with parsimony, by comparing it with threshold autoregressive processes, TAR(p), with possibly large autoregressive order p. Second, we study the descriptive power of the TARMA(1,1) model with respect to the class of autoregressive models, seen as universal approximators: in several situations, the TARMA(1,1) model outperforms AR(p) models even when p is large. Lastly, we analyze two real world data sets: the sunspot number and the male US unemployment rate time series. In both cases, we show that TARMA models provide a better fit with respect to the best TAR models proposed in literature.
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