While European integration has substantially contributed to economic convergence between the member states of the EU, the diverging development of highly developed metropolitan regions and lagging rural areas has become a growing challenge especially for the new member states in Central and...

The general objective of this study is to evaluate regional disparities and the territorial convergence under the impact of the cohesion policy, in the context of the European Union integration. The specific objectives on which the research included in this work focused are the following:...

The study is based on the critical observations that competitive market forces alone are not able to assure convergence with the developed countries. These observations are grounded on the results of the computation of the marginal rate of return to capital (which contradict the neoclassical...

This paper argues that some EU member states have been smart, or even dishonest. Splitting off capital cities from existing NUTS2 regions has given them an advantage in the Cohesion Policy funds allocation scheme but worsened the position of others. To explain the reasons and implications, we...

The economic and social cohesion policy of the European Union has two inter-related components, namely the vertical cohesion, referring to the alleviation of social disparities and the solidarity with the disadvantaged social groups, and the horizontal cohesion, which concentrates on the...