Abstract
Greater equality across Europe in productivity and per capita income has been one of the central goals for the European Community since the early days of European economic integration. Various policy measures have been introduced to help achieve this goal (the so-called “Structural Funds”). For a long time the regions of Europe were on a converging path and, hence, the existing set of policies seemed to have the desired effect (Molle 1980). More recent evidence has, however, challenged these previous findings by showing that the tendency towards convergence came to a halt in the beginning of the 1980s (Fagerberg and Verspagen 1996, Cappelen, Fagerberg and Verspagen 1999). This evidence, based on data for 12 EU countries up 1997 and presented in section 2 of this Chapter, confirms that there is very little regional convergence going on within EU member states. To the extent that there has been any convergence, it appears to be at the country level mainly due to strong growth in Portugal and Spain.
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Cappelen, Å., Castellacci, F., Fagerberg, J., Verspagen, B. (2003). Regional Disparities in Income and Unemployment in Europe. In: Fingleton, B. (eds) European Regional Growth. Advances in Spatial Science. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-07136-6_12
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-07136-6_12
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