Slowdowns and Meltdowns: Postwar Growth Evidence from 74 Countries

Proposes an explicit test for determining the significance and the timing of slowdowns in economic growth during the postwar period. Examines a large sample of countries (both industrialized and developing), and find that a majority though not all exhibit a significant structural break in their postwar growth rates. In nearly all of these cases the break was followed by a growth slowdown. The breaks fall into two primary periods which delineate countries by developmental and regional characteristics as well as by the magnitude of the subsequent slowdowns.

Finds that

• most industrialized countries experienced postwar growth slowdowns in the early 1970s
• the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom did not
• (c) developing countries (and in particular American countries) tended to experience much more severe slowdowns which with the more developed countries, began nearly a decade later

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