Postwar Slowdowns and Long-Run Growth: A Bayesian Analysis of Structural-Break Models

Using Bayesian methods, we re-examine the empirical evidence from Ben-David, Lumsdaine and Pappell (“Unit Roots, Postwar Slowdowns and Long-Run Growth: Evidence from Two Structural Breaks”, Empirical Economics, 28, 2003) regarding structural breaks in the long-run growth path of real output series for a number of OECD countries. Our Bayesian framework allows the number and pattern of structural changes in trend and variance to be endogenously determined. We find little evidence of postwar growth slowdowns across countries, and we find smaller output volatility for most of the developed countries after the end of World War II. Our empirical findings are consistent with neoclassical growth models, which predict increasing growth over the long run. The majority of the countries we analyze have grown faster in the postwar era as opposed to the period before the first break.