Is Per Capita Real GDP Stationary in Latin American Countries? Evidence from a Panel Stationary Test with Structural Breaks

In this note, we use the newly-developed and refined panel stationary test with structural breaks, as advanced by Carrion-i-Silvestre et al. (2005), to investigate the time-series properties of per capita real GDP for 20 Latin American countries during the 1960-2000 period. The empirical results from numerous earlier panel-based unit root tests which do not take structural breaks into account indicate that the per capita real GDP for all the countries we study here are non-stationary but when we employ Carrion-i-Silvestre et al.¡¦s (2005) panel stationary test with structural breaks, we find the null hypothesis of stationarity in per capita real GDP can not be rejected for any of the 20 countries.