Regional economic convergence and spatial quantile regression

TL;DR

This paper investigates economic convergence among European regions using spatial quantile regression to account for spatial dependence, providing a nuanced understanding of regional disparities over time.

Contribution

It introduces a spatial quantile regression approach to analyze regional economic convergence, extending previous national-level studies to European NUTS2 regions.

Findings

Identifies patterns of convergence and divergence across regions.

Highlights the importance of spatial dependence in regional economic analysis.

Provides detailed insights into regional disparities over nearly three decades.

Abstract

The presence of \b{eta}-convergence in European regions is an important issue to be analyzed. In this paper, we adopt a quantile regression approach in analyzing economic convergence. While previous work has performed quantile regression at the national level, we focus on 187 European NUTS2 regions for the period 1981-2009 and use spatial quantile regression to account for spatial dependence.