Using Bayesian tests for a structural break at an unknown break date, we search for a volatility reduction within the post-war sample for the growth rates of U.S. aggregate and disaggregate real GDP. We find that the growth rate of aggregate real GDP has been less volatile since the early...

While Perron and Wada's (2009) maximum likelihood estimation approach suggests that postwar U.S. real GDP follows a trend stationary process (TSP), our Bayesian approach based on the same model and the same sample suggests that it follows a difference stationary process (DSP). We first show...