Modification of autoregressive fractionally integrated moving average models for the estimation of persistence

In this paper, it is proposed to modify autoregressive fractionally integrated moving average (ARFIMA) processes by introducing an additional parameter to comply with the criticism of Hauser et al. (1999) that ARFIMA processes are not appropriate for the estimation of persistence, because of the degenerate behavior of their spectral densities at frequency zero. When fitting these modified ARFIMA processes to the US GNP, it turns out that the estimated spectra are very similar to those obtained with conventional ARFIMA models, indicating that, in this special case, the disadvantage of ARFIMA models cited by Hauser et al. (1999) does not seriously affect the estimation of persistence. However, according to the results of a goodness-of-fit test applied to the estimated spectra, both the ARFIMA models and the modified ARFIMA models seem to overfit the data in the neighborhood of frequency zero.