Rank-based entropy tests for serial independence

In nonparametric tests for serial independence the marginal distribution of the data acts as an infinite dimensional nuisance parameter. The decomposition of joint distributions in terms of a copula density and marginal densities shows that in general empirical marginals carry no information on dependence. It follows that the order of ranks is sufficient for inference, which motivates transforming the data to a pre-specified marginal distribution prior to testing. As a test statistic we use an estimator of the marginal redundancy. We numerically study the finite sample properties of the tests obtained when the data are transformed to uniform as well as normal marginals. For comparison purposes we also derive a rank-based test against local ARCH alternatives. The performance of the new tests is compared with a modified version of the BDS test and with the Ljung-Box test.