Testing for Stable Intervals in Non-Stationary Time Series

Abstract

Many time series are not stable over their full observation horizon, but may contain scientifically meaningful periods during which a signal remains stable up to a prescribed tolerance. We formulate this as an existence test for stable intervals in a non-stationary regression model with dependent, locally stationary errors. For a signal $d$ derived from the mean function, including deviations from reference levels and derivatives, stability over duration $\delta$ is encoded by $d_\infty=\inf_{t\in[0,1-\delta]}\sup_{s\in[t,t+\delta]}|d(s)|$. The hypothesis $d_\infty\ge\Delta$ states that no interval of length $\delta$ remains within the tolerance $\Delta$, while rejection provides evidence for the existence of a relevant stable period. We estimate $d$ by local linear regression and construct plug-in tests for $d_\infty$. The asymptotic distribution is determined only by near-extremal windows at which the minimax functional is attained. We formalize this localization through extremal sets and derive Gaussian and extreme value approximations for kernel estimators over possibly shrinking index sets with time-varying long-run variance. The resulting tests are consistent and have asymptotic level control. The theory also extends supremum-based relevant-change tests to time-varying long-run variance and derivative-based hypotheses. Simulations and applications to physiological and engineering time series illustrate the method.