A NONPARAMETRIC TEST FOR INSTANTANEOUS CAUSALITY WITH TIME-VARYING VARIANCES

This paper proposes a consistent nonparametric test with good sampling properties to detect instantaneous causality between vector autoregressive (VAR) variables with time-varying variances. The new test takes the form of the U -statistic, and has a limiting standard normal distribution under the null. We further show that the test is consistent against any fixed alternatives, and has nontrivial asymptotic power against a class of local alternatives with a rate slower than . We also propose a wi