A sharp analysis on the asymptotic behavior of the DurbinWatson statistic for the first-order autoregressive process

Abstract. The purpose of this paper is to provide a sharp analysis on the as-ymptotic behavior of the Durbin-Watson statistic. We focus our attention on the first-order autoregressive process where the driven noise is also given by a first-order autoregressive process. We establish the almost sure convergence and the asymptotic normality for both the least squares estimator of the unknown param-eter of the autoregressive process as well as for the serial correlation estimator associated to the driven noise. In addition, the almost sure rates of convergence of our estimates are also provided. It allows us to establish the almost sure con-vergence and the asymptotic normality for the Durbin-Watson statistic. Finally, we propose a new bilateral statistical test for residual autocorrelation. 1