Investigating economic convergence into a divergent world: the case of the European Union

Within recent years, assuring a sustainable degree of convergence, especially across the European Union, constituted one of the main objectives of the member states. Moreover, the central goal of the Cohesion Policy of the European Union is to reduce the existing disparities between different European regions. The main purpose of the current article is to investigate the degree of convergence between the 28 member states of the European Union in what concerns the GDP/capita variable starting year 1950. In order to accomplish this objective we used the Phillips and Sul (2007, 2009) methodology that develops a new approach for testing the convergence hypothesis and identifying the so called convergence clubs. As an element of novelty, we took into account the accession waves of each group of countries to the European Union. The main empirical results of our study do not confirm the absolute convergence hypothesis across the EU members states.economic convergence; convergence clubs; European Union; accession waves; Phillips and Sul methodology; EU member states