IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/wiw/wiwrsa/ersa05p411.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

A distribution dynamics approach to regional income convergence in reunified Germany

Author

Listed:
  • Falko Juessen

Abstract

In this paper, we present an empirical study of per capita income convergence across German labour market regions during 1992 to 2002 using nonparametric techniques. We find clear evidence for convergence during the period we study, i.e. that regions that were poor in 1992 have increased their relative incomes in 2002. A special feature of our approach is that it allows to make predictions about the long-run distribution of regional incomes. We predict a persistent inequality among German regions. This result is especially important with respect to the massive regional policy expenditures taken in the last decade. According to our analysis it is unlikely that German policy will prevent polarization in the regional income distribution even if transers and subsidies will be continued in a comparable magnitude. Consequently, we argue that regional policy programs in Germany do not achieve their aim, and therefore need to be reviewed.

Suggested Citation

  • Falko Juessen, 2005. "A distribution dynamics approach to regional income convergence in reunified Germany," ERSA conference papers ersa05p411, European Regional Science Association.
  • Handle: RePEc:wiw:wiwrsa:ersa05p411
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www-sre.wu.ac.at/ersa/ersaconfs/ersa05/papers/411.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Jones, Charles I, 1997. "Convergence Revisited," Journal of Economic Growth, Springer, vol. 2(2), pages 131-153, July.
    2. Reinhold Kosfeld & Jorgen Lauridsen, 2009. "Dynamic spatial modelling of regional convergence processes," Studies in Empirical Economics, in: Giuseppe Arbia & Badi H. Baltagi (ed.), Spatial Econometrics, pages 245-261, Springer.
    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. Andrade, Eduardo & Laurini, Marcio & Madalozzo, Regina & Valls Pereira, Pedro L., 2004. "Convergence clubs among Brazilian municipalities," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 83(2), pages 179-184, May.
    5. Keller, Wolfgang, 2000. "From socialist showcase to Mezzogiorno? Lessons on the role of technical change from East Germany's post-World War II growth performance," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 63(2), pages 485-514, December.
    6. Barro, Robert J & Mankiw, N Gregory & Sala-i-Martin, Xavier, 1995. "Capital Mobility in Neoclassical Models of Growth," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 85(1), pages 103-115, March.
    7. Durlauf, Steven N. & Johnson, Paul A. & Temple, Jonathan R.W., 2005. "Growth Econometrics," Handbook of Economic Growth, in: Philippe Aghion & Steven Durlauf (ed.),Handbook of Economic Growth, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 8, pages 555-677, Elsevier.
    8. Niebuhr, Annekatrin, 2000. "Convergence and the effects of spatial interaction," HWWA Discussion Papers 110, Hamburg Institute of International Economics (HWWA).
    9. Quah, Danny, 1997. "Empirics for growth and distribution," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 2138, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    10. Philippe Van Kerm, 2003. "Adaptive kernel density estimation," Stata Journal, StataCorp LP, vol. 3(2), pages 148-156, June.
    11. Mariano Bosch Mossi & Patricio Aroca & Ismael J. FernáNDEZ & Carlos Roberto Azzoni, 2003. "Growth Dynamics and Space in Brazil," International Regional Science Review, , vol. 26(3), pages 393-418, July.
    12. Quah, Danny, 1997. "Empirics for Growth and Distribution: Stratification, Polarization, and Convergence Clubs," CEPR Discussion Papers 1586, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    13. Hughes Hallett, A J & Ma, Yue, 1993. "East Germany, West Germany, and Their Mezzogiorno Problem: A Parable for European Economic Integration," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 103(417), pages 416-428, March.
    14. Burda, Michael C & Funke, Michael, 1993. "Eastern Germany: Can't We Be More Optimistic?," CEPR Discussion Papers 863, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    15. Funke, Michael & Strulik, Holger, 1999. "Regional growth in West Germany: convergence or divergence?," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 16(4), pages 489-502, December.
    16. Philippe Aghion & Steven Durlauf (ed.), 2005. "Handbook of Economic Growth," Handbook of Economic Growth, Elsevier, edition 1, volume 1, number 1.
    17. Funke Michael & Strulik Holger, 2000. "Growth and Convergence in a Two-Region Model of Unified Germany," German Economic Review, De Gruyter, vol. 1(3), pages 363-384, August.
    18. Sung Jin Kang, 2004. "The evolution of regional income distribution in Japan," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 36(3), pages 253-259.
    19. Baumol, William J & Wolff, Edward N, 1988. "Productivity Growth, Convergence, and Welfare: Reply," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 78(5), pages 1155-1159, December.
    20. Gerling, Katja, 2000. "Subsidization and Structural Change in Eastern German Transition: Did Economic Policy Meet Its Objectives?," Kiel Working Papers 998, Kiel Institute for the World Economy (IfW Kiel).
    21. Quah, D., 1990. "Galton'S Fallacy And The Tests Of The Convergence Hypothesis," Working papers 552, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Department of Economics.
    22. Frank Siebern, 2000. "Growth and Convergence in a Two‐Region Model of Unified Germany," German Economic Review, Verein für Socialpolitik, vol. 1(3), pages 363-384, August.
    23. Quah, Danny, 2001. "Searching for prosperity a comment," Carnegie-Rochester Conference Series on Public Policy, Elsevier, vol. 55(1), pages 305-319, December.
    24. Adolfo Maza & Jose Villaverde, 2004. "Regional disparities in the EU: mobility and polarization," Applied Economics Letters, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 11(8), pages 517-522.
    25. Johnson, Paul A., 2005. "A continuous state space approach to "Convergence by Parts"," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 86(3), pages 317-321, March.
    26. Danny Quah, 1997. "Empirics for Growth and Distribution," CEP Discussion Papers dp0324, Centre for Economic Performance, LSE.
    27. Bulli, Sandra, 2001. "Distribution Dynamics and Cross-Country Convergence: A New Approach," Scottish Journal of Political Economy, Scottish Economic Society, vol. 48(2), pages 226-243, May.
    28. Sanghamitra Bandyopadhyay, 2001. "Twin Peaks: Convergence Empirics of Economic Growth across Indian States," WIDER Working Paper Series DP2001-142, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).
    29. Baumol, William J, 1986. "Productivity Growth, Convergence, and Welfare: What the Long-run Data Show," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 76(5), pages 1072-1085, December.
    30. Quah, Danny T., 1996. "Empirics for economic growth and convergence," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 40(6), pages 1353-1375, June.
    31. Johnson, Paul A., 2000. "A nonparametric analysis of income convergence across the US states," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 69(2), pages 219-223, November.
    32. Razin, Assaf & Yuen, Chi-Wa, 1997. "Income convergence within an economic union: the role of factor mobility and coordination," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 66(2), pages 225-245, November.
    33. 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.
    34. Quah, Danny, 1993. " Galton's Fallacy and Tests of the Convergence Hypothesis," Scandinavian Journal of Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 95(4), pages 427-443, December.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

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


    Cited by:

    1. Hans-Friedrich Eckey & Reinhold Kosfeld & Matthias Türck, 2007. "Regional Convergence in Germany: a Geographically Weighted Regression Approach," Spatial Economic Analysis, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 2(1), pages 45-64.
    2. Amador, João & Cabral, Sónia & Ramos Maria, José, 2007. "International Trade Patterns over the Last Four Decades: How does Portugal Compare with other Cohesion Countries?," MPRA Paper 5996, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    3. Petr Janský & Dominika Kolcunová, 2017. "Regional differences in price levels across the European Union and their implications for its regional policy," The Annals of Regional Science, Springer;Western Regional Science Association, vol. 58(3), pages 641-660, May.
    4. Eckey, Hans-Friedrich & Döring, Thomas & Türck, Matthias, 2006. "Convergence of regions from 23 EU member states," Volkswirtschaftliche Diskussionsbeiträge 86, University of Kassel, Faculty of Economics and Management.

    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. Falko Juessen, 2009. "A distribution dynamics approach to regional GDP convergence in unified Germany," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 37(3), pages 627-652, December.
    2. 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.
    3. Kounetas, Konstantinos Elias, 2018. "Energy consumption and CO2 emissions convergence in European Union member countries. A tonneau des Danaides?," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 69(C), pages 111-127.
    4. Steven N. Durlauf & Andros Kourtellos & Chih Ming Tan, 2008. "Empirics of Growth and Development," Chapters, in: Amitava Krishna Dutt & Jaime Ros (ed.), International Handbook of Development Economics, Volumes 1 & 2, volume 0, chapter 3, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    5. Mahmoud A. El-Gamal & Deockhyun Ryu, 2013. "Nonstationarity and Stochastic Stability of Relative Income Clubs," Review of Income and Wealth, International Association for Research in Income and Wealth, vol. 59(4), pages 756-775, December.
    6. 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).
    7. 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.
    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. Carlos Mendez-Guerra, 2017. "Heterogeneous Growth and Regional (Di)Convergence in Bolivia: A Distribution Dynamics Approach," Economia Coyuntural,Revista de temas de perspectivas y coyuntura, Instituto de Investigaciones Economicas y Sociales 'Jose Ortiz Mercado' (IIES-JOM), Facultad de Ciencias Economicas, Administrativas y Financieras, Universidad Autonoma Gabriel Rene Moreno, vol. 2(4), pages 81-108.
    10. Silvia Dal Bianco, 2016. "Going clubbing in the eighties: convergence in manufacturing sectors at a glance," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 50(2), pages 623-659, March.
    11. Kounetas, Konstantinos E. & Polemis, Michael L. & Tzeremes, Nickolaos G., 2021. "Measurement of eco-efficiency and convergence: Evidence from a non-parametric frontier analysis," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 291(1), pages 365-378.
    12. 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.
    13. Kounetas, Konstantinos & Zervopoulos, Panagiotis D., 2019. "A cross-country evaluation of environmental performance: Is there a convergence-divergence pattern in technology gaps?," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 273(3), pages 1136-1148.
    14. Ezcurra, Roberto, 2007. "Is there cross-country convergence in carbon dioxide emissions?," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 35(2), pages 1363-1372, February.
    15. Andreas Pyka & Jens J. Kruger & Uwe Cantner, 2003. "Twin Peaks: What the Knowledge-based Approach Can Say about the Dynamics of the World Income Distribution," Chapters, in: Pier Paolo Saviotti (ed.), Applied Evolutionary Economics, chapter 9, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    16. Christian Amplatz, 2003. "The Economic Convergence Performance of Central and Eastern European Countries," Economic Change and Restructuring, Springer, vol. 36(4), pages 273-295, December.
    17. Roberto Basile, 2009. "Productivity Polarization across Regions in Europe," International Regional Science Review, , vol. 32(1), pages 92-115, January.
    18. Quah, Danny, 2001. "Searching for prosperity a comment," Carnegie-Rochester Conference Series on Public Policy, Elsevier, vol. 55(1), pages 305-319, December.
    19. Túlio Cravo & Guilherme Resende, 2013. "Economic growth in Brazil: a spatial filtering approach," The Annals of Regional Science, Springer;Western Regional Science Association, vol. 50(2), pages 555-575, April.
    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

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:wiw:wiwrsa:ersa05p411. 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: Gunther Maier (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.ersa.org .

    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.