Vicente Junqueira de Castro

The objective of this dissertation is to analyze the structural breaks on gross fixed investment in the period 1952-1998, using recent methodological developments. The importance of the behavior of this variable for the economy in the long run is regarding its tendency. Any change either positive or negative in this tendency would reflect directly in the production capacity of the economy. Thus, structural breaks studies give us a better  understanding of the changes in the variable regarding its nature of permanent or temporary. The structural breaks studies are further steps on the issue regarding stationary series. A non-stationary variable may be caused by a structural break along the period. Thus, in this study, our focus  is to test if the non-stationary condition of the variable gross fixed investment may be caused by a structural break. The methodology to be used was employed by Vogelsang (1997), but a small change accommodate a optimal choice for the break period. As a result, be founded that the gross fixed investment  had a small structural break in period  analized.