Abstract
This paper describes the project of developing a long-term growth model to be used by the staff of the Bank of Israel. The purpose of the model is to forecast GDP growth over a horizon of approximately 50 years given various assumptions, and to evaluate how different exogenous developments, or policy steps, are expected to affect the long-run growth rate. The model is composed of five distinct blocks, each focused on a different factor of production or productivity. The blocks draw on different modeling approaches along the tradeoff between theoretical, detailed and empirical advantages. The baseline forecast indicates that the future growth rate of GDP and GDP per capita are expected to be lower than historical averages, mainly due to future demographic developments and the exhaustion of significant growth drivers that operated in the past.
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