What Kind of Regional Convergence?

Recent estimates of convergence equations using panel data techniques tend to produce theoretically unpalatable results which run counter to the views prevailing in the literature. This paper argues that these results may be partly due to the difficulty of empirically separating short-term fluctuations around trend from long-term growth dynamics. Using data for the Spanish regions, it is found that explicitly allowing for short-term noise reduces the estimated convergence rate to values which are roughly consistent with an extended neoclassical model. On the other hand, the dispersion of estimated steady states remains high, although these estimates do not seem to be particularly reliable.