Depressions in the Colombian economic growth during the twentieth century: a Markov switching regime model

In this article, we modelled the Colombian long run economic growth (1925-2003) using a two-regime first order Markov switching model. We found evidence of nonlinearity in the annual rate of economic growth. The results show that changes between regimes are sudden and sporadic. The Colombian economy remains in the sustainable growth regime most of the time. The turning points from the Markov switching model capture very well the behaviour of real output through time. In fact, they identify the four main depressions of the century.