Error autocorrelation revisited: the AR(1) case

The aim of the paper is to consider the implicit restrictions imposed when adopting an AR(1) error term in the context of the linear regression model. It is shown that these restrictions amount to assuming a largely identical temporal structure for all the variables involved in the specification. Implicit in this is the assumption that these variables are mutually Granger non-causal. The main implication of this result is that in most cases when residual autocorrelation is detected boththe OLS and GLS estimators are biased and inconsistent.