Aarhus University Seal

Recursive Multiple Change Point Detection of Nonstationary Time Series: Instability Tests, Estimation and Confidence Intervals

Zhou Zhou (University of Toronto)
Monday 8 June 2026 15:00 – 16:00 Aud. D2 (1531-119)
Stochastics Seminar

We develop a recursive binary segmentation method for multiple change point detection under general nonstationary temporal dynamics. A novel Gaussian multiplier bootstrap for the CUMSUM statistics is proposed, offering robustness to complex dependence structures. Through meticulous calibration of the critical values at each stage of the binary segmentation procedure, the proposed method ensures control of the Type I error under the null hypothesis of no change points. When change points are present, the proposed method identifies the correct number of changes with a prespecified probability, and the resulting change point location estimators attain the same uniform consistency rate as classical binary segmentation. Building on this, second-stage refined estimators that achieve the optimal convergence rate are introduced, and their asymptotic distributions are established under both fixed and vanishing jump magnitudes. Extensive numerical experiments across various settings confirm the robustness and superior performance of the proposed procedures relative to existing approaches. To illustrate the practical relevance of the proposed methodology, we analyze U.S. inflation data, yielding change points that align with several documented macroeconomic episodes.

Revised: 26.05.2026