IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/ris/integr/0295.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Income Convergence in the Asia-Pacific Region

Author

Listed:
  • Michelis, Leo

    (Ryerson University)

  • Neaime, Simon

    (American University of Beirut)

Abstract

This paper uses the concepts of σ-convergence and β-convergence to evaluate empirically the hypothesis of income convergence in the Asia-Pacific region, and its subsets of East Asia and ASEAN during the period 1960-1999. Because of the East Asian financial crisis in the late 1990s, the analysis is carried out sequentially, first for the period 1960-1990 and then for the period 1960-1999. For the former period, we find evidence of conditional β-convergence in a group of 17 APEC countries and in 10 EASTASIA countries. No evidence of income convergence is found for the ASEAN group of countries. For the latter period, there is weak evidence of conditional β- convergence in a group of 16 APEC countries, and much weaker evidence of income convergence in EASTASIA. We attribute this finding to the damaging effects of the financial crisis in the second half of the 1990s. Also, the empirical evidence shows that openness to international trade is statistically the most important variable for sustaining economic growth in the Asia-Pacific region. Of the other variables macroeconomic stability has a positive impact on growth, while government spending and population growth have a negative effect in general.

Suggested Citation

  • Michelis, Leo & Neaime, Simon, 2004. "Income Convergence in the Asia-Pacific Region," Journal of Economic Integration, Center for Economic Integration, Sejong University, vol. 19, pages 470-498.
    • Handle: RePEc:ris:integr:0295
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    To our knowledge, this item is not available for download. To find whether it is available, there are three options:
    1. Check below whether another version of this item is available online.
    2. Check on the provider's web page whether it is in fact available.
    3. Perform a search for a similarly titled item that would be available.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Mustafa Gömleksiz & Ahmet Şahbaz & Birol Mercan, 2017. "Regional Economic Convergence in Turkey: Does the Government Really Matter for?," Economies, MDPI, vol. 5(3), pages 1-16, July.
    2. Ab-Rahim, Rossazana & Selvarajan, Sonia Kumari & Md Noor, Nor Ghani & Affizzah Awang Marikan, Dayang, 2018. "Convergence Clubs of Economic Liberalization in ASEAN, China, and India," Jurnal Ekonomi Malaysia, Faculty of Economics and Business, Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia, vol. 52(3), pages 129-141.
    3. Githuku, Simon & Omolo, Jacob & Mwabu, Germano, 2018. "Income Convergence in the East African Community," African Journal of Economic Review, African Journal of Economic Review, vol. 6(1), January.
    4. Fernandez, Viviana, 2006. "Does domestic cooperation lead to business-cycle convergence and financial linkages?," The Quarterly Review of Economics and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 46(3), pages 369-396, July.
    5. repec:lje:journl:v:25:y:2020:i:2:p:23-53 is not listed on IDEAS

    More about this item

    Keywords

    APEC; economic growth; economic integration; regional convergence;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • O11 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Development - - - Macroeconomic Analyses of Economic Development
    • O47 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Growth and Aggregate Productivity - - - Empirical Studies of Economic Growth; Aggregate Productivity; Cross-Country Output Convergence

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:ris:integr:0295. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Yunhoe Kim (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/desejkr.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.