A simulation study of least squares and ridge estimaors for normal and nonnormal autocorrelated disturbances

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to examine the small sample properties of various ridge estimators along with least squares, in some special settings.Specifically, we consider a first order autoregressive structuure for normal and nonnormal disturbances, and report on a Monte Carlo study the small sample behavior of these estimators according to the criteria of bias and dispersion.The results suggest that under all the examined settings and for all the criteria used the HKB estimator exhibited a superior performance compared to the other estimators, while the LS and LW estimators gave consistently poor results.Also if the error term is only moderately autocorrelated the performance of the ridge estimators that do not account for autocorrelation outperform their counterparts as well as least squares that account for autocorrelation.

Keywords:

• Ridge estimators
• Least squares
• Nonnormal disturbances
• Autocorrelation
• Monte Cario experiment