ERS Point-Optimal Unit-Root Test

The Elliott-Rothenberg-Stock (ERS) Point-Optimal test, introduced in their landmark 1996 Econometrica paper, is a near-efficient parametric procedure for testing whether a univariate time series contains a unit root. By first applying GLS detrending at a carefully chosen local-to-unity value and then computing a likelihood-ratio-type statistic, it achieves power close to the Gaussian power envelope—making it one of the most powerful unit-root tests available to applied econometricians.