Why are econometric analyses valid when the subject of study is inherently different? I am reading numerous articles pertaining to unemployment as references for my own work. Yet I've encountered many where they use long time series in countries which have had some sort of pertinent regulatory adjustment. By that, I mean that there are laws and regulations that were enacted during the period of analysis. Yet, the time series are not broken into subdivisions to be studied independently.
 A: The world is changing constantly, so if you want to apply time series analysis only when the environment is constant you cannot do time series analysis at all. This does not mean that you can ignore changes in the environment, but it does mean that it is necessarily a trade-off when to split a time-series up. Apperently, these authors made a different trade-off than you would have done. That happens all the time. You can discuss that in your literature review. But I would only do that if it helps bring across the message you want to convey in your article, otherwise it is just a distraction.
A: If what one writes is (socio)economic history, and wants to accompany the narration and analysis with summary quantitative, descriptive measures, "breaking the time series in subdivisions in order to be studied", appears helpful and sound  -because here, the model used to extract these measures from the data is not the prime explanatory force, or focus, of the research endeavor. 
But if one tries to compact the analysis and the arguments inside an economic/econometric model, then this "breaking" inescapably denies that, alongside things that change, there are other things that remain the same, as an economy evolves.  
This is why there are numerous econometric techniques that have been developed in order to capture phenomena like the one you describe: from the inclusion of dummy variables in the specification to "take on" the effect of the special temporary phenomenon, to "structural breaks" models (with maybe multiple breaks), to "regime-switching" models, all try to study in a comprehensive and unified way this strange beast that an economy is -partly governed by laws that appear thousands of years old, partly changing and shifting constantly.
