Quantitative Economics

Journal of the Econometric Society

Edited by: Bernard Salanié • Print ISSN: 1759-7323 • Online ISSN: 1759-7331

Quantitative Economics: May, 2025, Volume 16, Issue 2

Understanding Regressions with Observations Collected at High Frequency over Long Span

https://doi.org/10.3982/QE2055
p. 405-457

Yoosoon Chang|Ye Lu|Joon Y. Park

In this paper, we analyze regressions with observations collected at small time intervals over a long period of time. For the formal asymptotic analysis, we assume that samples are obtained from continuous time stochastic processes, and let the sampling interval δ shrink down to zero and the sample span T increase up to infinity. In this setup, we show that the standard Wald statistic diverges to infinity and the regression becomes spurious as long as δ → 0 sufficiently fast relative to T → ∞. Such a phenomenon is indeed what is frequently observed in practice for the type of regressions considered in the paper. In contrast, our asymptotic theory predicts that the spuriousness disappears if we use the robust version of the Wald test with an appropriate long‐run variance estimate. This is supported, strongly and unambiguously, by our empirical illustration using the regression of long‐term on short‐term interest rates.


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Supplemental Material

Supplement to "Understanding Regressions with Observations Collected at High Frequency over Long Span"

Yoosoon Chang, Ye Lu, and Joon Y. Park

The replication package for this paper is available at https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.14010992. The Journal checked the data and codes included in the package for their ability to reproduce the results in the paper and approved online appendices.