In his 1966 Inaugural Lecture at Cambridge, entitled On the Causes of the Slow Rate of Economic Growth in the UK, the Hungarian-born British economist, Nicholas Kaldor presented a series of "laws" to account for the growth rate differences between Britain on the one hand, and the more successful...

The paper assesses the relevance of the EU Macroeconomic Imbalances Procedure scoreboard for the EU candidate countries. The calculation of the 14 indicators for a nine years period proves the recent economic crisis helped resolve some of the imbalances in the EU candidate countries but on the...

As a recent candidate to EU integration, Serbia has to undertake important economic reforms to ensure that its economy convergences towards the Western principles of competitiveness and efficiency. The analysis of recent trends in the economy shows that Serbia is slightly converging to EU...

Economic convergence is an important topic in modern Macroeconomics. Economic convergence refers to the tendency of per capita income of countries (regions) to approach their steady-state value. Two types of convergence are identified in the literature: Conditional and Absolute Convergence. This...

This paper uses the adaptive LASSO estimator to determine the variables important for economic growth. The adaptive LASSO estimator is a computationally very simple procedure that performs at the same time both consistent parameter estimation and model selection. The methodology is applied to...

We show that the use of pooled and panel data in estimating convergence across countries (or other territorial areas) may involve some pitfalls since this type of data cannot properly distinguish between actual convergence and the possibility of decreasing growth rates over time within each...

This paper tests for the existence of neoclassical and/or technological catching up between the Italian regions in the last three decades. The tests are performed by means of a modified b-convergence equation and of a model based on the decomposition of output growth. The results imply that...

This paper aims to analyse the effects of institution quality on technology catch-up in five North African countries (Algeria, Egypt, Morocco, Sudan and Tunisia) compared to 3 groups of developing and emerging countries (Sub Saharan Africa, Asia, and Latin America) over the period 1970-2005. The...

This paper analyses the differential impact of human capital, in terms of different levels of schooling, on regional productivity and convergence. The potential existence of geographical spillovers of human capital is also considered by applying spatial panel data techniques. The empirical...