This paper investigates the accuracy of bootstrap-based inference in the case
of long memory fractionally integrated processes. The re-sampling method is
based on the semi-parametric sieve approach, whereby the dynamics in the
process used to produce the bootstrap draws are captured by an autoregressive
approximation. Application of the sieve method to data pre-filtered by a
semi-parametric estimate of the long memory parameter is also explored.
Higher-order improvements yielded by both forms of re-sampling are demonstrated
using Edgeworth expansions for a broad class of statistics that includes first-
and second-order moments, the discrete Fourier transform and regression
coefficients. The methods are then applied to the problem of estimating the
sampling distributions of the sample mean and of selected sample
autocorrelation coefficients, in experimental settings. In the case of the
sample mean, the pre-filtered version of the bootstrap is shown to avoid the
distinct underestimation of the sampling variance of the mean which the raw
sieve method demonstrates in finite samples, higher order accuracy of the
latter notwithstanding. Pre-filtering also produces gains in terms of the
accuracy with which the sampling distributions of the sample autocorrelations
are reproduced, most notably in the part of the parameter space in which
asymptotic normality does not obtain. Most importantly, the sieve bootstrap is
shown to reproduce the (empirically infeasible) Edgeworth expansion of the
sampling distribution of the autocorrelation coefficients, in the part of the
parameter space in which the expansion is valid
