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We explore the limits of the autoregressive (AR) sieve bootstrap, and show that its applicability extends well beyond the realm of linear time series as has been previously thought. In particular, for appropriate statistics, the AR-sieve bootstrap is valid for stationary processes possessing a general Wold-type autoregressive representation with respect to a white noise; in essence, this includes all stationary, purely nondeterministic processes, whose spectral density is everywhere positive. Our main theorem provides a simple and effective tool in assessing whether the AR-sieve bootstrap is asymptotically valid in any given situation. In effect, the large-sample distribution of the statistic in question must only depend on the first and second order moments of the process; prominent examples include the sample mean and the spectral density. As a counterexample, we show how the AR-sieve bootstrap is not always valid for the sample autocovariance even when the underlying process is linear.Comment: Published in at http://dx.doi.org/10.1214/11-AOS900 the Annals of Statistics (http://www.imstat.org/aos/) by the Institute of Mathematical Statistics (http://www.imstat.org

The bootstrap is a method for estimating the distribution of an estimator or test statistic by resampling one's data or a model estimated from the data. The methods that are available for implementing the bootstrap and the accuracy of bootstrap estimates depend on whether the data are an independent random sample or a time series. This paper is concerned with the application of the bootstrap to time-series data when one does not have a finite-dimensional parametric model that reduces the data generation process to independent random sampling. We review the methods that have been proposed for implementing the bootstrap in this situation and discuss the accuracy of these methods relative to that of first-order asymptotic approximations. We argue that methods for implementing the bootstrap with time-series data are not as well understood as methods for data that are independent random samples. Although promising bootstrap methods for time series are available, there is a considerable need for further research in the application of the bootstrap to time series. We describe some of the important unsolved problems.

The bootstrap is a method for estimating the distribution of an estimator or test statistic by resampling one's data or a model estimated from the data. The methods that are available for implementing the bootstrap and the accuracy of bootstrap estimates depend on whether the data are a random sample from a distribution or a time series. This paper is concerned with the application of the bootstrap to time-series data when one does not have a finite-dimensional parametric model that reduces the data generation process to independent random sampling. We review the methods that have been proposed for implementing the bootstrap in this situation and discuss the accuracy of these methods relative to that of first-order asymptotic approximations. We argue that methods for implementing the bootstrap with time-series data are not as well understood as methods for data that are sampled randomly from a distribution. Moreover, the performance of the bootstrap as measured by the rate of convergence of estimation errors tends to be poorer with time series than with random samples. This is an important problem for applied research because first-order asymptotic approximations are often inaccurate and misleading with time-series data and samples of the sizes encountered in applications. We conclude that there is a need for further research in the application of the bootstrap to time series, and we describe some of the important unsolved problems.

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