A note on in‐sample and out‐of‐sample tests for Granger causality

This paper studies in‐sample and out‐of‐sample tests for Granger causality using Monte Carlo simulation. The results show that the out‐of‐sample tests may be more powerful than the in‐sample tests when discrete structural breaks appear in time series data. Further, an empirical example investigating Taiwan's investment–saving relationship shows that Taiwan's domestic savings may be helpful in predicting domestic investments. It further illustrates that a possible Granger causal relationship is detected by out‐of‐sample tests while the in‐sample test fails to reject the null of non‐causality. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.