This study identifies income convergence in Europe over 1960 to 2012. The Great Recession since 2008 reversed the GDP per capita convergence in the EU-15, but the extransition countries have mostly continued to catch up. We found this by analysing the Sigma convergence of GDP per capita in the...

This paper examines empirically whether and how regional integration leads to convergence and growth amongst developing countries. Using standard growth models for nearly 100 developing countries over 1970-2004 we cannot establish robust growth effects of regional integration as such at the...

In the postwar era, economic interaction and integration among Western European countries has grown rapidly. We examine whether those close and growing linkages have led to inter-country income convergence in Western Europe during 1960-2000. We find clear empirical evidence of convergence. This...

This paper explores the growth implications of regional integration. From the theory, it identifies the ‘footprints’ that such growth should leave in the data. It then checks the data on the four poor EU nations for such footprints. Prima facie evidence for Ireland, Portugal and Spain...

Recent research has emphasised the role of trade in productivity growth. The purpose of the present paper is to investigate how regional integration, and the different treatment of member and non-member imports, affects the relation between imports and productivity growth. We focus on the...

Some of the findings from new trade and economic geography theory are quite critical concerning the South-South agreements. This study contributes to the discussion by means of different empirical analyses of a representative set of South-South integrations. The income developments of its member...

Most empirical applications of the OCA approach based on asymmetric shocks have failed to account for the credibility aspects that play an important role in deciding to join the EMU from the EMS or the EMS-BIS. In this paper, we tackle this problem by relying on a regime switching approach that...

The model developed in this paper expands upon the traditional neoclassical exogenous growth model by facilitating a long-run growth analysis of the impact of openness to trade within a multi-country framework. Openness affects growth by impacting the extent of knowledge spillovers from abroad....

In this paper, we assess whether trade among member countries of a regional trade agreement (intra-regional trade) contributes more to output growth than trade with nonmember countries (extra-regional trade). We use Granger causality tests to evaluate the trade-growth relationship in 13...

According to the traditional theory of international trade, a gradual opening of trade teamed with migration would make initially asymmetric regions more symmetric. In stark contrast, the new economic geography models show that factor mobility and opening may eventually exaggerates initial...