One of the most striking features of the world economy is that wealthy countries are clustered together. This paper theoretically and empirically explains a mechanism for this clustering by extending the Acemoglu and Ventura model so that it takes real geography into account. Countries close to...

Joining the European Union big opportunities in the international markets have opened for Latvia. Paper purpose is to investigate influence of international integration processes on development of economy of Latvia. In the paper Latvian economic indicators before and after entering the EU are...

This paper deals with the narrowing the income gap between the Central and East European New Member States (NMS-5) and the EU-25 and with the trade-off between the real and nominal convergence. The methodology is based on international standards enabling comparisons of macroeconomic indicators,...

China is well-placed to avoid the so-called “middle-income trap” and to continue to converge towards the more advanced economies, even though growth is likely to slow from near double-digit rates in the first decade of this millennium to around 7% at the 2020 horizon. However, in order to...

The issue of foreign aid dependency in African countries remains controversial among policy makers. So far, there is no consensus on aid effectiveness and the resulting policy prescriptions have been conflicting. The Euro zone which provides the bulk of foreign aid to developing countries, is...

This paper presents the analysis of sigma (σ) and beta (β) convergences of per capita GDP among the 10 European countries which accessed the European Union in 2004. Our results confirm the existence of both types of convergence in the second half of the 1990s and the 2000s. Generally, the...

This paper presents the analysis of unconditional and convergence among the ten European countries that accessed the European Union in 2004. Unconditional convergence means that the less developed countries (with lower GDP per capita) grow faster than the more developed countries (with higher...

Using panel data for the period of 1975-2011, this study attempts to answer the question of whether the quantity or quality of foreign aid matters to economic growth of least developed countries (LDCs). Quality effects are captured using different specifications of both bilateral and...

We use a model of combined endogenous growth and economic geography to study the impact of regional economic integration on the member and non-member countries of a regional union. Regional integration affects growth through interregional technology diffusion symbolized by knowledge spillovers...

This paper contributes to the empirical literature by providing a quantitative measurement of the influence of regional trade integration on productivity. For this purpose we address the link between trade and productivity thanks to knowledge spillovers in a multi-country model. The...