Mihaela Simionescu

PhD, Senior Researcher

Institute for Economic Forecasting

TESTING SIGMA CONVERGENCE ACROSS EU-28

of the Romanian Academy

Bucharest, Romania

E-mail:mihaela_mb1@yahoo.com

ABSTRACT. The main goal of this research is to assess the degree of convergence in European Union- 28 (EU-28) during 2000-2012. After a spatial analysis of macroeconomic indicators using maps and graphs that were built in GeoDa, the sigma convergence was tested. For this purpose, variation indicators in the simple and weighted variant for GDP per capita in PPS were utilized, the weights being given by the population weights in each country of the EU-28. The results indicated a decrease in divergence process in 2012 compared to 2000, but there is still not enough evidence for the closeness of an acceptable degree of convergence. However, there is a low degree of divergence in EU-28 compared to EU-27 in 2012 with respect to 2000. In 2012, the EU-28 populations explained better the GDP compared to the number of employed persons.

Received: December, 2013

1st Revision: March, 2014

Accepted: April, 2014

DOI:10.14254/2071-789X.2014/7-1/5

JEL Classification:C18, C88, F2, F15

Keywords: convergence, sigma convergence, GDP per capita, standard deviation, variance, coefficient of variation.