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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 Hamburg University, Department of Economics in its series Quantitative Macroeconomics Working Papers with number 20509.

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Date of creation: Aug 2005
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Handle: RePEc:ham:qmwops:20509
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Keywords: Regional Economic Growth; Germany; Convergence Clubs; Density Estimation; Modality Tests;

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Find related papers by JEL classification:
  • C14 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Econometric and Statistical Methods and Methodology: General - - - Semiparametric and Nonparametric Methods: General
  • R11 - Urban, Rural, Regional, Real Estate, and Transportation Economics - - General Regional Economics - - - Regional Economic Activity: Growth, Development, Environmental Issues, and Changes
  • R12 - Urban, Rural, Regional, Real Estate, and Transportation Economics - - General Regional Economics - - - Size and Spatial Distributions of Regional Economic Activity; Interregional Trade (economic geography)

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Cited by:

  1. Vollmer, Sebastian & Holzmann, Hajo & Ketterer, Florian & Klasen, Stephan, 2010. "Distribution Dynamics of Regional GDP per Employee in Unified Germany," Hannover Economic Papers (HEP) dp-461, Leibniz Universität Hannover, Wirtschaftswissenschaftliche Fakultät.
  2. Joachim Frick & Jan Goebel, 2008. "Regional Income Stratification in Unified Germany Using a Gini Decomposition Approach," Regional Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 42(4), pages 555-577.
  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. 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].
  5. Juessen Falko, 2005. "A distribution dynamics approach to regional GDP convergence in reunified Germany," Urban/Regional 0506008, EconWPA.
  6. Beate Schirwitz & Christian Seiler & Klaus Wohlrabe, 2009. "Regionale Konjunkturzyklen in Deutschland – Teil III: Konvergenz," Ifo Schnelldienst, Ifo Institute - Leibniz Institute for Economic Research at the University of Munich, vol. 62(15), pages 23-32, 08.

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