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Drifting Together or Falling Apart? The Empirics of Regional Economic Growth in Post-Unification Germany

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  • Roberta Colavecchio
  • Declan Curran
  • Michael Funke

Abstract

The objective of this paper is to address the question of convergence across German districts in the first decade after German unification by drawing out and emphasising some stylised facts of regional per capita income dynamics. We achieve this by employing non-parametric techniques which focus on the evolution of the entire cross-sectional income distribution. In particular, we follow a distributional approach to convergence based on kernel density estimation and implement a number of tests to establish the statistical significance of our findings. This paper finds that the relative income distribution appears to be stratifying into a trimodal/bimodal distribution.

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Paper provided by CESifo Group Munich in its series CESifo Working Paper Series with number 1533.

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Date of creation: 2005
Date of revision:
Handle: RePEc:ces:ceswps:_1533
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Keywords: regional economic growth; Germany; convergence clubs; density estimation; modality tests;

Other versions of this item:

Find related papers by JEL classification:
  • C22 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Single Equation Models; Single Variables - - - Time-Series Models; Dynamic Quantile Regressions; Dynamic Treatment Effect Models; Diffusion Processes
  • F31 - International Economics - - International Finance - - - Foreign Exchange
  • F36 - International Economics - - International Finance - - - Financial Aspects of Economic Integration

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  1. Islam, Nazrul, 1995. "Growth Empirics: A Panel Data Approach," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, MIT Press, vol. 110(4), pages 1127-70, November.
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  22. 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..
  23. 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, 04.
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Cited by:

  1. Joachim R. Frick & Jan Goebel, 2005. "Regional Income Stratification in Unified Germany Using a Gini Decomposition Approach," Discussion Papers of DIW Berlin 540, DIW Berlin, German Institute for Economic Research.
  2. Falko Juessen, 2009. "A distribution dynamics approach to regional GDP convergence in unified Germany," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 37(3), pages 627-652, December.
  3. Konrad, Kai A. & Skaperdas, Stergios, 1999. "The Market for Protection and the Origin of the State," CEPR Discussion Papers 2173, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
  4. Sebastian Vollmer & Hajo Holzmann & Florian Ketterer & Stephan Klasen, 2010. "Distribution Dynamics of Regional GDP per Employee in Unifi ed Germany," Courant Research Centre: Poverty, Equity and Growth - Discussion Papers 55, Courant Research Centre PEG, revised 26 Sep 2011.
  5. Bruckmeier, Kerstin & Schwengler, Barbara, 2009. "The impact of federal social policies on spatial income inequalities in Germany : empirical evidence from social security data," IAB Discussion Paper 200901, Institut für Arbeitsmarkt- und Berufsforschung (IAB), Nürnberg [Institute for Employment Research, Nuremberg, Germany].
  6. Beate Schirwitz & Christian Seiler & Klaus Wohlrabe, 2009. "Regionale Konjunkturzyklen in Deutschland – Teil III: Konvergenz," Ifo Schnelldienst, Ifo Institute for Economic Research at the University of Munich, vol. 62(15), pages 23-32, 08.

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