Growth Slowdowns and Middle-Income Trap: Evidence from New Unit Root Framework

This paper suggests a new testing procedure to systematically examine the middle-income trap (MIT). To empirically demonstrate this procedure, one high income and 14 middle-income countries are examined using newly developed unit root tests - Fourier ADF with structural break (FADF-SB) and Seemingly Unrelated Regressions Fourier ADF (SUR-FADF). The FADF-SB test incorporates unknown nonlinearity and smooth break in the time-series, while the SUR-FADF test accounts for cross-sectional dependency. The empirical findings produced mixed results: 10 countries have a relatively high possibility of facing the MIT problem, while only one country has a relatively low possibility of facing the problem. For the remaining three countries, it is uncertain whether they will face the problem of MIT. These empirical findings have significant policy implications.