Structural change is a fundamental concept in economic model building. Statistics and econometrics provide the tools for identification of change, for estimating the onset of a change, for assessing its extent and relevance. Statistics and econometrics also have de veloped models that are suitable for picturing the data-generating process in the presence of structural change by assimilating the changes or due to the robustness to its presence. Important subjects in this context are forecasting methods. The need for such methods became obvious when, as a consequence of the oil price shock, the...

In 1984, the University of Bonn (FRG) and the International Institute for Applied System Analysis (IIASA) in Laxenburg (Austria), created a joint research group to analyze the relationship between economic growth and structural change. The research team was to examine the commodity composition as well as the size and direction of commodity and credit flows among countries and regions. Krelle (1988) reports on the results of this "Bonn-IIASA" research project. At the same time, an informal IIASA Working Group was initiated to deal with prob lems of the statistical analysis of economic data in...