Taking Italy as a case study, this paper investigates the link between economies' structural similarities and convergence. Specifically, treating technology as sector-specific and modelling technological spillovers as a positive function of the degree of similarity between economies' sectoral...

Convergence studies are concerned with the question of whether poor economies catch-up to wealthier economies over time. The regional convergence process in Europe has generated considerable interest in recent years. Because of financial straits regional convergence is a central question, since...

This paper provides evidence on the role of net fiscal transfers to households and EU structural funds for per-capita output convergence across a large sample of European regions during the period 1995-2005. We find that net fiscal transfers, while achieving regional redistribution, seem to...

After the German reunification, interregional subsidies accounted for approximately four percent of gross fixed capital investment in the new federal states. We show that between 1992 and 2005 infrastructure and (small) business aid had a negative net impact on regional economic growth. This...

We use Bayesian Model Averaging (BMA) to evaluate the robustness of determinants of economic growth in a new dataset of 255 European regions in the 1995-2005 period. We use three different specifications based on (1) the cross-section of regions, (2) the cross-section of regions with country...