A likelihood approximation for locally stationary processes

A new approximation to the Gaussian likelihood of a multivariate locally stationary process is introduced. It is based on an approximation of the inverse of the covariance matrix of such processes. The new quasi likelihood is a generalization of the classical Whittle likelihood for stationary processes. Several approximation results are proved for the likelihood function. For parametric models, asymptotic normality and efficiency of the resulting estimator are derived for Gaussian locally stationary processes.