REGIONAL CONVERGENCE AND AGGLOMERATION IN THE EUROPEAN UNION: A SPATIAL APPROACH

Reducing economic discrepancies among the regions of the European Union is of constant concern for economic debates and analyses. This is the reason why convergence represents a crucial issue of intense research since the early 1990s. Although valuable progress has been achieved with respect to the knowledge on this topic still new aspects emerge. The latest trend in European studies is to examine not only chronologically the process of convergence, but also spatially. This is because spatial statistics and econometrics provide better cross-section comparison among regions. In this context, the purpose of this paper is to extend the investigation of convergence across the EU27 regions during 2000-2010 by taking into account the spatial interaction between regions. To throw empirical light on this issue, factors regarding spatial agglomerations and economic are introduced in our convergence analysis. Finally, we present several attitudes towards a potential process of convergence between EaP countries and EU