Second-order noncausality in multivariate GARCH processes

Typical multivariate economic time series may exhibit co-behavior patterns not only in the conditional means, but also in the conditional variances. In this paper we give two new definitions of variance noncausality in a multivariate setting; a Granger-type noncausality and a linear Granger noncausality through projections on Hilbert spaces. Both definitions are related to a previous second-order noncausality concept defined by Granger et al. in a bivariate setting. The implications of second-order noncausality on multivariate ARMA processes with GARCH-type errors are investigated. We derive exact testable restrictions on the parameters of the processes considered, implied by this type of noncausality. Conditions for the finiteness of the fourth-order moment of the multivariate GARCH process are derived and related to earlier results in the univariate framework. We include an illustration of second-order noncausality in a trivariate model of daily financial returns.