Perfect multicollinearity with a cubic term in the model? I'm trying to figure out why adding a cubic term in the model doesn't guarantee a perfect multicollinearity. If $X$ is known, then $X^3$ is known in both magnitude and sign and vice versa. It may not be the case between $X$ and $X^2$ in terms of sign.
 A: Multicollinearity refers to the situation in which the regressor matrix $Z$ does not have full column rank $k$.
This is the case if it is possible to linearly combine the columns $z_1,\ldots,z_k$ into the zero vector with a vector $a=(a_1,\ldots,a_k)'$ other than the trivial zero vector $0$, i.e.,
$$
a_1z_1+\ldots+a_kz_k=0
$$
for $a\neq0$. If, say, $z_1\equiv X=(-1,0,1,2)'$, then $z_2\equiv X^3=(-1,0,1,8)'$. You will not find values $a_1,a_2$ other than zeros that produce
$$
a_1\begin{pmatrix}-1\\0\\1\\2\end{pmatrix}+a_2\begin{pmatrix}-1\\0\\1\\8\end{pmatrix}=0.
$$
If $z_2$ were some multiple or fraction of $z_1$, it would be possible, so that we would have multicollinearity.
As an aside, if your regressor $X$ is a dummy variable, we do have multicollinearity with powers of $X$, as powers of $0$ and $1$ are of course also $0$ and $1$.
Try, e.g.,
X <- -1:2
lm(rnorm(4)~X+I(X^3)-1)

X <- sample(c(0,1),10, replace = T)
lm(rnorm(10)~X+I(X^3)-1)

A: You often will get multicollinnearity issue with cubes but not the perfect kind. In your case a perfect multicollinnearity can be defined as: $\alpha x+x^3=c$. 
This is not true by definition. However, when $x<<1$ you get $x-x^3\approx 0$ because $x^3\approx x$. Therefore, sometimes you may get perfect multicollinearity warning or design matrix condition number too big warning due to rounding, but this will not happen with every data set. 
