IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/wly/japmet/v21y2006i5p605-628.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Empirical evidence of income dynamics across EU regions

Author

Listed:
  • Maria Grazia Pittau
  • Roberto Zelli

Abstract

This paper analyses the distribution of purchasing power standardized per capita income across EU‐12 regions between 1977 and 1996. Dispersion of incomes between regions is measured taking into account their population sizes. The cross‐sectional distributions are initially described by weighted kernel density estimates, revealing a multimodal structure of the distributions, less evident over the period. This evidence is supported by a bootstrap test. To detect homogeneous groups of regions, the empirical distributions are approximated by a finite mixture of normal densities. The components of the mixture represent clusters of poor/rich regions, while the mixing proportions the allocation over the poor and the rich components. The number of components is assessed by a bootstrap LR test, and the goodness of fit by a kernel density‐based test. Income mobility is modelled by the stochastic kernel, the continuous counterpart of the transition probability matrix. The main implication is a very slow process of catching up of the poorest regions with the richer ones and a process of shifting away of a small group of very rich regions. This evidence is reflected in the shape of the ergodic distribution, which is well fitted by a two‐component mixture model. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Suggested Citation

  • Maria Grazia Pittau & Roberto Zelli, 2006. "Empirical evidence of income dynamics across EU regions," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 21(5), pages 605-628, July.
  • Handle: RePEc:wly:japmet:v:21:y:2006:i:5:p:605-628
    DOI: 10.1002/jae.855
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.1002/jae.855
    Download Restriction: no

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1002/jae.855?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. André Sapir & Richard Baldwin & Daniel Cohen & Anthony Venables, 1999. "Market integration, regionalism and the global economy," ULB Institutional Repository 2013/8074, ULB -- Universite Libre de Bruxelles.
    2. Paapaa, Richard & van Dijk, Herman K., 1998. "Distribution and mobility of wealth of nations," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 42(7), pages 1269-1293, July.
    3. Bianchi, Marco, 1997. "Testing for Convergence: Evidence from Non-parametric Multimodality Tests," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 12(4), pages 393-409, July-Aug..
    4. Quah, Danny T., 1996. "Regional convergence clusters across Europe," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 40(3-5), pages 951-958, April.
    5. Martin, Philippe & Ottaviano, Gianmarco I P, 2001. "Growth and Agglomeration," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 42(4), pages 947-968, November.
    6. Quah, Danny, 1997. "Empirics for growth and distribution," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 2138, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    7. Bernard, Andrew B. & Durlauf, Steven N., 1996. "Interpreting tests of the convergence hypothesis," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 71(1-2), pages 161-173.
    8. Sylvia. Richardson & Peter J. Green, 1997. "On Bayesian Analysis of Mixtures with an Unknown Number of Components (with discussion)," Journal of the Royal Statistical Society Series B, Royal Statistical Society, vol. 59(4), pages 731-792.
    9. Galor, Oded, 1996. "Convergence? Inferences from Theoretical Models," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 106(437), pages 1056-1069, July.
    10. Marron, J.S. & Schmitz, H.-P., 1992. "Simultaneous Density Estimation of Several Income Distributions," Econometric Theory, Cambridge University Press, vol. 8(4), pages 476-488, December.
    11. Quah, Danny, 1997. "Empirics for Growth and Distribution: Stratification, Polarization, and Convergence Clubs," CEPR Discussion Papers 1586, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    12. Richard E. Baldwin & Philippe Martin & Gianmarco I. P. Ottaviano, 2021. "Global Income Divergence, Trade, and Industrialization: The Geography of Growth Take-Offs," World Scientific Book Chapters, in: Firms and Workers in a Globalized World Larger Markets, Tougher Competition, chapter 2, pages 25-57, World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd..
    13. Charles I. Jones, 1997. "On the Evolution of the World Income Distribution," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 11(3), pages 19-36, Summer.
    14. Costas Megir & Danny Quah, 1996. "Regional Convergence Clusters Across Europe," CEP Discussion Papers dp0274, Centre for Economic Performance, LSE.
    15. Raffaele Paci, 1997. "More similar and less equal: Economic growth in the European regions," Review of World Economics (Weltwirtschaftliches Archiv), Springer;Institut für Weltwirtschaft (Kiel Institute for the World Economy), vol. 133(4), pages 609-634, December.
    16. Bart Verspagen & Marjolein C.J. Cani, ls, 2001. "Barriers to knowledge spillovers and regional convergence in an evolutionary model," Journal of Evolutionary Economics, Springer, vol. 11(3), pages 307-329.
    17. Costas Azariadis & Allan Drazen, 1990. "Threshold Externalities in Economic Development," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 105(2), pages 501-526.
    18. Michele Boldrin & Fabio Canova, 2001. "Inequality and convergence in Europe’s regions: reconsidering European regional policies," Economic Policy, CEPR, CESifo, Sciences Po;CES;MSH, vol. 16(32), pages 206-253.
    19. Quah, Danny, 2001. "Searching for prosperity a comment," Carnegie-Rochester Conference Series on Public Policy, Elsevier, vol. 55(1), pages 305-319, December.
    20. Fan, Yanqin, 1994. "Testing the Goodness of Fit of a Parametric Density Function by Kernel Method," Econometric Theory, Cambridge University Press, vol. 10(2), pages 316-356, June.
    21. Maurseth, Per Botolf, 2001. "Convergence, geography and technology," Structural Change and Economic Dynamics, Elsevier, vol. 12(3), pages 247-276, September.
    22. Fingleton, Bernard, 1997. "Specification and Testing of Markov Chain Models: An Application to Convergence in the European Union," Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics, Department of Economics, University of Oxford, vol. 59(3), pages 385-403, August.
    23. Danny Quah, 1997. "Empirics for Growth and Distribution," CEP Discussion Papers dp0324, Centre for Economic Performance, LSE.
    24. Quah, Danny, 1996. "Regional Convergence Clusters Across Europe," CEPR Discussion Papers 1286, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    25. Quah, Danny T., 1996. "Empirics for economic growth and convergence," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 40(6), pages 1353-1375, June.
    26. Johnson, Paul A., 2000. "A nonparametric analysis of income convergence across the US states," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 69(2), pages 219-223, November.
    27. Quah, Danny T, 1997. "Empirics for Growth and Distribution: Stratification, Polarization, and Convergence Clubs," Journal of Economic Growth, Springer, vol. 2(1), pages 27-59, March.
    28. Efthymios Tsionas, 2000. "Regional Growth and Convergence: Evidence from the United States," Regional Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 34(3), pages 231-238.
    29. G. J. McLachlan, 1987. "On Bootstrapping the Likelihood Ratio Test Statistic for the Number of Components in a Normal Mixture," Journal of the Royal Statistical Society Series C, Royal Statistical Society, vol. 36(3), pages 318-324, November.
    30. Quah, Danny T, 1996. "Convergence Empirics across Economies with (Some) Capital Mobility," Journal of Economic Growth, Springer, vol. 1(1), pages 95-124, March.
    31. Antonio J. Mora & Esther Vayá & Jordi Suriñach & Enrique López-Bazo, 1999. "original: Regional economic dynamics and convergence in the European Union," The Annals of Regional Science, Springer;Western Regional Science Association, vol. 33(3), pages 343-370.
    32. Baldwin,Richard & Cohen,Daniel & Sapir,Andre & Venables,Anthony (ed.), 1999. "Market Integration, Regionalism and the Global Economy," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9780521645898, October.
    33. Magrini, Stefano, 1999. "The evolution of income disparities among the regions of the European Union," Regional Science and Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 29(2), pages 257-281, March.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Magrini, Stefano, 2004. "Regional (di)convergence," Handbook of Regional and Urban Economics, in: J. V. Henderson & J. F. Thisse (ed.), Handbook of Regional and Urban Economics, edition 1, volume 4, chapter 62, pages 2741-2796, Elsevier.
    2. Maria Grazia Pittau, 2005. "Fitting Regional Income Distributions in the European Union," Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics, Department of Economics, University of Oxford, vol. 67(2), pages 135-161, April.
    3. Giovanni Caggiano & Leone Leonida, 2013. "Multimodality in the distribution of GDP and the absolute convergence hypothesis," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 44(3), pages 1203-1215, June.
    4. Kurt Geppert & Andreas Stephan, 2008. "Regional disparities in the European Union: Convergence and agglomeration," Papers in Regional Science, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 87(2), pages 193-217, June.
    5. Sheila Chapman & Stefania Cosci & Loredana Mirra, 2012. "Income dynamics in an enlarged Europe: the role of capital regions," The Annals of Regional Science, Springer;Western Regional Science Association, vol. 48(3), pages 663-693, June.
    6. Toni Mora, 2005. "Conditioning factors on regional European clubs - a distributional approach," ERSA conference papers ersa05p302, European Regional Science Association.
    7. Cem Ertur & Julie Le Gallo & Catherine Baumont, 2006. "The European Regional Convergence Process, 1980-1995: Do Spatial Regimes and Spatial Dependence Matter?," International Regional Science Review, , vol. 29(1), pages 3-34, January.
    8. Maarten Bosker & Waldo Krugell, 2008. "Regional Income Evolution In South Africa After Apartheid," Journal of Regional Science, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 48(3), pages 493-523, August.
    9. Eckey, Hans-Friedrich & Türck, Matthias, 2005. "Convergence of EU-regions: A literature report," Volkswirtschaftliche Diskussionsbeiträge 80, University of Kassel, Faculty of Economics and Management.
    10. Völlmecke, Dominik & Jindra, Björn & Marek, Philipp, 2016. "FDI, human capital and income convergence—Evidence for European regions," Economic Systems, Elsevier, vol. 40(2), pages 288-307.
    11. Leone Leonida & Leone Leonida & Daniel Montolio, 2003. "Public Capital, Growth and Convergence in Spain. A Counterfactual Density Estimation Approach," Working Papers 2003/3, Institut d'Economia de Barcelona (IEB).
    12. Paul Johnson & Chris Papageorgiou, 2020. "What Remains of Cross-Country Convergence?," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 58(1), pages 129-175, March.
    13. Cheong, Tsun Se & Wu, Yanrui, 2018. "Convergence and transitional dynamics of China's industrial output: A county-level study using a new framework of distribution dynamics analysis," China Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 48(C), pages 125-138.
    14. Durlauf, Steven N. & Quah, Danny T., 1999. "The new empirics of economic growth," Handbook of Macroeconomics, in: J. B. Taylor & M. Woodford (ed.), Handbook of Macroeconomics, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 4, pages 235-308, Elsevier.
    15. Azomahou, Théophile T. & El ouardighi, Jalal & Nguyen-Van, Phu & Pham, Thi Kim Cuong, 2011. "Testing convergence of European regions: A semiparametric approach," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 28(3), pages 1202-1210, May.
    16. Falko Juessen, 2009. "A distribution dynamics approach to regional GDP convergence in unified Germany," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 37(3), pages 627-652, December.
    17. Le Pen, Yannick, 2011. "A pair-wise approach to output convergence between European regions," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 28(3), pages 955-964, May.
    18. Breinlich, Holger & Ottaviano, Gianmarco I.P. & Temple, Jonathan R.W., 2014. "Regional Growth and Regional Decline," Handbook of Economic Growth, in: Philippe Aghion & Steven Durlauf (ed.), Handbook of Economic Growth, edition 1, volume 2, chapter 4, pages 683-779, Elsevier.
    19. Leone Leonida & Daniel Montolio, 2001. "Convergence and Inter-Distributional Dynamics among the Spanish Provinces. A Non-parametric Density Estimation Approach," Working Papers 2001/7, Institut d'Economia de Barcelona (IEB).
    20. Roberto Ezcurra & Carlos Gil & Pedro Pascual & Manuel Rapun, 2005. "Inequality, Polarisation and Regional Mobility in the European Union," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 42(7), pages 1057-1076, June.

    More about this item

    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:wly:japmet:v:21:y:2006:i:5:p:605-628. 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.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with 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: Wiley Content Delivery (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.interscience.wiley.com/jpages/0883-7252/ .

    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.