Files
Abstract
In the light of the reaffirmed importance of
agricultural convergence within the integration process, the
paper provides a preliminary investigation of the impact of the
enlargement from the EU-15 to the EU-27 on agricultural real
b-convergence and, with reference to the EU-27, of its
relationship with economic catching-up process. The empirical
analysis, based on a GWR approach, takes into account the
regional spatial interdependences in estimating local
parameters of convergence. The approach adopted allows to
overcome the contradictory results from OLS estimations and
parametric spatial econometric models pointed out by the
literature and primarily connected to the existence of no
unique convergence rate all over Europe. The analysis is based
on a sample of 259 EU-27 regions at NUTS 2 level and is
referred to the time period from 1991-2007.