Economic Development and Structural Breaks: An Application of the Lee and Strazicich(2003) Lagrange Multiplier Test to the Libyan Economy, 1970-2007

The paper discusses the evolution of economic development whilst examining the time series properties with two structural breaks for the Libyan economy using annual time series from 1970 to 2007. Both the Augmented Dickey-Fuller (ADF) and the Lee and Strazicich (2003) unit root tests are used to determine the time series properties of the data. The ADF results are not able to reject the null of unit root for all of the 14 macroeconomic variables. On the other hand, the results of Lee and Strazicich (2003) test with two endogenously determined structural breaks indicate the non-rejection of unit root null of only eight variables. The structural break dates correspond to the major economic events in the Libyan economy such as oil shocks, changing of economic regime, the UN sanctions and lifting of the UN sanctions and USA trade embargo.