Summary This paper analyses the speed and patterns of economic convergence in the new EU Member States of Central and Eastern Europe during transition and the first years of EU membership. After a brief discussion of measurement and data issues, the paper provides stylised facts on growth and...

For about a decade, GDP growth in Central European countries has been consistently faster than in the 'old' EU-15. As a first approximation, one can expect a growth differential of about 2 percentage points to prevail also in the future. This practical rule-of-thumb is broadly consistent with...