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Rbreak: An R Package for Estimating Structural Breaks under Linear Restrictions with Application to Linear Model Tree

Cheolju Kim, Zhongjun Qu

arXiv 10 Jun 2026 · Econometrics

arXiv:2606.12261 · PDF · DOI · OpenAlex · Extracted main text

Abstract

The package rbreak implements methods for detecting structural breaks and estimating break locations for linear multiple regression models under general linear restrictions on the coefficient vector. Restrictions can be within regimes, across regimes, or both, and are supported in two forms: an affine parameterization (Form A: delta = S*theta + s) and explicit linear constraints (Form B: R*delta = r). It provides break date estimation with confidence interval, a restricted sup-F test for the null of no structural change, simulation of critical values by Monte Carlo, and a bootstrap restart procedure to reduce the risk of convergence to spurious local optima. It also implements a generalized regression tree (linear model tree) procedure where each leaf contains a linear regression rather than a local average. This note explains the methods and illustrates them with applications.

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Most heavily cited references

The works this paper leans on most, across its whole bibliography — not restricted to papers in our corpus. Ranked by composite intensity, which combines how often a work is mentioned, how many sections mention it, and how much of that falls in the main text rather than the appendix.

ReferenceIntensityMentionsSectionsMain text
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6Breiman, Friedman, Olshen \ Stone (1984) Classification and Regression Trees, Wadsworth, Belmont, CA0.58531100%
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Showing the top 10 of 15 scored citations.