Overcoming the barriers: cross-border convergence in Portugal and Spain between 2000 and 2018

Cross-border cooperation is a major instrument of European policy to overcome the barriers posed by national borders and correcting regional imbalances. But the question of whether it is leading to the convergence of cross-border regions (CBRs) is still open for debate, given the significant heterogeneity of borders and the localized and spatially bound nature of many border effects. This article analyses the beta and sigma convergences in GDP per capita growth for the NUTS-3 at the Portuguese-Spanish border between 2000 and 2018, also considering their population growth. The main finding is that, even if their population growth is below the national averages, the CBR is converging in economic terms. This convergence is visible in the reduced dispersion of the GDP in the border regions and is also confirmed by spatial models, which showed that being a border region increases the probability of having above-average growth rates and that the NUTS-3 with initially low GDP in the cross-border region were also growing above average. This convergence was found to be robust, considering different model specifications and important factors for convergence, such as population growth and spatial dependence. A negative relationship between population and GDP per capita growth was found.