augmented-dickey-fullerunit root
The attached image is my output for augumented dickey fuller unit root test from stata, I am not sure my data is stationary. if it is please explain based on what rule. because some places i see that test statistic should be less than 5% while other places i see the test statistic should be less than 1.96(Siginificant critical value)
It seems the creators of this particular R command presume one is familiar with the original Dickey-Fuller formulae, so did not provide the relevant documentation for how to interpret the values. I found that Enders was an incredibly helpful resource (Applied Econometric Time Series 3e, 2010, p. 206-209--I imagine other editions would also be fine). Below I'll use data from the URCA package, real income in Denmark as an example.
> income <- ts(denmark$LRY)
It might be useful to first describe the 3 different formulae Dickey-Fuller used to get different hypotheses, since these match the ur.df "type" options. Enders specifies that in all of these 3 cases, the consistent term used is gamma, the coefficient for the previous value of y, the lag term. If gamma=0, then there is a unit root (random walk, nonstationary). Where the null hypothesis is gamma=0, if p<0.05, then we reject the null (at the 95% level), and presume there is no unit root. If we fail to reject the null (p>0.05) then we presume a unit root exists. From here, we can proceed to interpreting the tau's and phi's.
(where $e_t$ is the error term, presumed to be white noise; $\gamma = a-1$ from $y_t = a \,y_{t-1} + e_t$; $y_{t-1}$ refers to the previous value of $y$, so is the lag term)
For type= "none," tau (or tau1 in R output) is the null hypothesis for gamma = 0. Using the Denmark income example, I get "Value of test-statistic is 0.7944" and the "Critical values for test statistics are: tau1 -2.6 -1.95 -1.61. Given that the test statistic is within the all 3 regions (1%, 5%, 10%) where we fail to reject the null, we should presume the data is a random walk, ie that a unit root is present. In this case, the tau1 refers to the gamma = 0 hypothesis. The "z.lag1" is the gamma term, the coefficient for the lag term (y(t-1)), which is p=0.431, which we fail to reject as significant, simply implying that gamma isn't statistically significant to this model. Here is the output from R
> summary(ur.df(y=income, type = "none",lags=1))
>
> ###############################################
> # Augmented Dickey-Fuller Test Unit Root Test #
> ###############################################
>
> Test regression none
>
>
> Call:
> lm(formula = z.diff ~ z.lag.1 - 1 + z.diff.lag)
>
> Residuals:
> Min 1Q Median 3Q Max
> -0.044067 -0.016747 -0.006596 0.010305 0.085688
>
> Coefficients:
> Estimate Std. Error t value Pr(>|t|)
> z.lag.1 0.0004636 0.0005836 0.794 0.431
> z.diff.lag 0.1724315 0.1362615 1.265 0.211
>
> Residual standard error: 0.0251 on 51 degrees of freedom
> Multiple R-squared: 0.04696, Adjusted R-squared: 0.009589
> F-statistic: 1.257 on 2 and 51 DF, p-value: 0.2933
>
>
> Value of test-statistic is: 0.7944
>
> Critical values for test statistics:
> 1pct 5pct 10pct
> tau1 -2.6 -1.95 -1.61
(where $a_0$ is "a sub-zero" and refers to the constant, or drift term)
Here is where the output interpretation gets trickier. "tau2" is still the $\gamma=0$ null hypothesis. In this case, where the first test statistic = -1.4462 is within the region of failing to reject the null, we should again presume a unit root, that $\gamma=0$.
The phi1 term refers to the second hypothesis, which is a combined null hypothesis of $a_0 = \gamma = 0$. This means that BOTH of the values are tested to be 0 at the same time. If p<0.05, we reject the null, and presume that AT LEAST one of these is false--i.e. one or both of the terms $a_0$ or $\gamma$ are not 0. Failing to reject this null implies that BOTH $a_0$ AND $\gamma = 0$, implying 1) that $\gamma=0$ therefore a unit root is present, AND 2) $a_0=0$, so there is no drift term. Here is the R output
> summary(ur.df(y=income, type = "drift",lags=1))
>
> ###############################################
> # Augmented Dickey-Fuller Test Unit Root Test #
> ###############################################
>
> Test regression drift
>
>
> Call:
> lm(formula = z.diff ~ z.lag.1 + 1 + z.diff.lag)
>
> Residuals:
> Min 1Q Median 3Q Max
> -0.041910 -0.016484 -0.006994 0.013651 0.074920
>
> Coefficients:
> Estimate Std. Error t value Pr(>|t|)
> (Intercept) 0.43453 0.28995 1.499 0.140
> z.lag.1 -0.07256 0.04873 -1.489 0.143
> z.diff.lag 0.22028 0.13836 1.592 0.118
>
> Residual standard error: 0.0248 on 50 degrees of freedom
> Multiple R-squared: 0.07166, Adjusted R-squared: 0.03452
> F-statistic: 1.93 on 2 and 50 DF, p-value: 0.1559
>
>
> Value of test-statistic is: -1.4891 1.4462
>
> Critical values for test statistics:
> 1pct 5pct 10pct
> tau2 -3.51 -2.89 -2.58
> phi1 6.70 4.71 3.86
(where $a_{2}t$ is a time trend term)
The hypotheses (from Enders p. 208) are as follows:
tau: $\gamma=0$
phi3: $\gamma = a_2 = 0$
phi2: $a_0 = \gamma = a_2 = 0$
This is similar to the R output. In this case, the test statistics are -2.4216 2.1927 2.9343
In all of these cases, these fall within the "fail to reject the null" zones (see critical values below). What tau3 implies, as above, is that we fail to reject the null of unit root, implying a unit root is present.
Failing to reject phi3 implies two things: 1) $\gamma = 0$ (unit root) AND 2) there is no time trend term, i.e., $a_2=0$. If we rejected this null, it would imply that one or both of these terms was not 0.
Failing to reject phi2 implies 3 things: 1) $\gamma = 0$ AND 2) no time trend term AND 3) no drift term, i.e. that $\gamma =0$, that $a_0 = 0$, and that $a_2 = 0$. Rejecting this null implies that one, two, OR all three of these terms was NOT zero.
Here is the R output
> summary(ur.df(y=income, type = "trend",lags=1))
>
> ###############################################
> # Augmented Dickey-Fuller Test Unit Root Test #
> ###############################################
>
> Test regression trend
>
>
> Call:
> lm(formula = z.diff ~ z.lag.1 + 1 + tt + z.diff.lag)
>
> Residuals:
> Min 1Q Median 3Q Max
> -0.036693 -0.016457 -0.000435 0.014344 0.074299
>
> Coefficients:
> Estimate Std. Error t value Pr(>|t|)
> (Intercept) 1.0369478 0.4272693 2.427 0.0190 *
> z.lag.1 -0.1767666 0.0729961 -2.422 0.0192 *
> tt 0.0006299 0.0003348 1.881 0.0659 .
> z.diff.lag 0.2557788 0.1362896 1.877 0.0665 .
> ---
> Signif. codes: 0 '***' 0.001 '**' 0.01 '*' 0.05 '.' 0.1 ' ' 1
>
> Residual standard error: 0.02419 on 49 degrees of freedom
> Multiple R-squared: 0.1342, Adjusted R-squared: 0.08117
> F-statistic: 2.531 on 3 and 49 DF, p-value: 0.06785
>
>
> Value of test-statistic is: -2.4216 2.1927 2.9343
>
> Critical values for test statistics:
> 1pct 5pct 10pct
> tau3 -4.04 -3.45 -3.15
> phi2 6.50 4.88 4.16
> phi3 8.73 6.49 5.47
In your specific example above, for the d.Aus data, since both of the test statistics are inside of the "fail to reject" zone, it implies that $\gamma=0$ AND $a_0 = 0$, meaning that there is a unit root, but no drift term.
You'r test indicates that the series does follow a unit root. Note that the DF-test is one sided so you should not think in absolute values. You'r test statistic is 8.943 which clearly is higher than -1.950 so you cannot reject the null of a unit root in the series. That being said I think that you will have very low power because you only have 48 observations. When you have so few observations it will look like the series does not mean revert when in fact, with more observations, it will be mean reverting. Second I would try to augment the ADF regression with a trend and more lags. Autocorrelation in the error term will invalidate the DF test! Hence use the ADF test with more lags to account for the autocorrelation.
1) Look at the ACF to determine approximately how many lags you need to include. 2) Remove insignificant lags 3) When all included lags are significant look at the t-value of the variable of interest. If its lower than -1.950 then you do not have a unit root, if its higher then you do have a unit root (which you in fact do have). As mentioned, you'r problem is with the low observations and the lack of lags and probably also a time trend in the regression.
Best Answer
The null hypothesis of the (augmented) Dickey Fuller unit root test is that the series being tested has a unit root (that implies nonstationarity).
The basic logic tells you to reject the null hypothesis if the test statistic is sufficiently extreme. The question could be, does it matter whether the test statistic is extremely large and positive or extremely large and negative. Here you are lucky to see which way the extremality of interest goes: 10% critical value is -1.605, 5% critical value (more extreme than 10%) is lower (more negative) at -1.950 and 1% critical value (more extreme than 5%) is even lower at -2.639. So you see that the more negative the test statistic is, the more extreme. In other words, the extremality goes into the negative direction.
Now see what the actual test statistic is: 10.134. That is less extreme than the conventional 5% value (and even the 10% value) because it is less negative than -2.639 (and even -1.605). Therefore, you do not reject the null hypothesis of unit root at any of the conventional significance levels. You data seems to be nonstationary.
This is a generic way of using tests you do not understand well. Of course, it is always better to know more to understand the intuition behind the test, but that is not always the case.