The impact of structural funds of the European Union (EU) on regional economic growth is a matter of both political and economic importance. The large and regular payments made across the EU to countries and regions within them were and are meant to promote various aspects of growth and...

Significant disparities still exist between regions of the European Union, even though substantial Cohesion investments are directed to address this issue. To adjust the Cohesion Policy (CP), researchers assess the returns of the CP, but almost all studies are carried out at NUTS1&2 or a country...

Development gaps are a common feature throughout the regions of the European Union, and Romania is no exception. Despite all the political and financial efforts, the convergence process is lengthy and complex, and the gaps with the deepest economic and social roots are the most difficult to be...

Progress in regional convergence in the EU has been uneven over the last two decades. While Central and Eastern Europe has been catching up, Southern Europe has often lost ground, especially after the global financial crisis. Furthermore, within most countries, gaps between large cities and...

The purpose of the current paper is to analyze the impact of regional potentials on the process of growth. How are different types of regions (e.g. medium sized [city] regions, rural regions, urban regions or metropolitan and high-tech cluster regions) affected by improved performance, and to...

We investigate the hypothesis of regional convergence in the per-capita GDP in 242 European regions (NUTS2) during the 2000-2021 period. The literature shows mixed results, from absolute convergence towards a joint long-run distribution to multiple regimes (convergence club). Our results show a...

Williamson (1965) argued that catching up countries experiencing strong national growth tend also to see a widening in regional disparities, whereas in more developed economies strong national growth and falling regional disparities could go hand in hand. We find some evidence of a trade-off...

The economic crisis has affected the EU regions very differently over the last five years, depending on the region's strengths or weaknesses, its sectoral structure and the response of national and regional governments. In some countries, downturns can lead to narrower interregional disparities,...

This paper analyses the effects of the EU Cohesion Policy (CP) on the economic growth of 276 European NUTS-2 regions between 2008 and 2016. Using a structural equation model (SEM) consisting of both a measurement component (with two latent variables) and a structural component, we estimate the...

Convergence of EU regions is an often examined research question. However, there are no studies available which include in their analysis the New Member States from the former Eastern Bloc. We estimate several models of absolute convergence and of conditional convergence taking into account the...