Am 1.5.2004 sind zehn neue Mitgliedstaaten, vor allem Transformationsländer, in die EU aufgenommen worden. Drei Jahre später, am 1.1.2007, kamen Bulgarien und Rumänien hinzu. Während deutsche Unternehmer zunächst die zusätzliche Konkurrenz fürchteten, bewerten sie die Auswirkungen der...

Many structural changes have occurred in the European Union countries, for example, there have been changes in sectoral employment share, in the demand of goods due to technology, in trade patterns and in technology. These structural changes may affect the process of convergence. Most of the...

Coming from standard economic growth theory and empirical evidences, we concentrated on the convergence process as a result of structural changes in economy. We investigate the differences among countries in EU in terms of the share in total economy of main sectors. Then, based on the spatial...

The paper presents an analysis of real income convergence between the 11 countries of Central Eastern Europe which have joined the European Union (EU11) and 15 countries of Western Europe (EU15) in the period 1993-2015. The evolution of the income gap between the two groups of countries in terms...

The forces of the market and systems competition bring about economic and social convergence in Europe. There is no need for social policies at the EU level. Social harmonisation would distort migration flows and slow down the speed of economic convergence. National welfare states will be...

The aim of our analysis is the evaluation of the total and sectoral convergence of labour productivity between 182 regions of EU12 in the period 1991-2006. The selected sectors are agriculture, manufactory, market and non-market services. We adopt a β- and sígma-convergence approach along with...

Certainly the current crisis is affecting seriously the convergence process in EU. Starting from the spatial distribution in EU of some fundamental development indicators before the current crisis, we try to estimate the impact of the prolonged crisis. During last years, the less developed...

This study suggests a two-step approach to identifying and interpreting regional convergence clubs in Europe. The first step involves identifying the number and composition of clubs using a space-time panel data model for annual income growth rates in conjunction with Bayesian model comparison...

The EU regions have been experiencing a period of unprecedented change. The ongoing (and parallel) processes of EU integration and enlargement have progressively transformed regional economies to integral parts of the emerging (European) socio-economic space, exposing them to the forces and the...