Romania's communist regime used forced industrialization and urbanization policies as a solution for speeding-up the pace of development in the lagging areas, which resulted in reducing regional disparities. However, after 1989 there areas were the first that suffered the hardships of economic...

Standard parametric tests of convergence cannot capture whether the increased dispersion among state incomes is due to a steepening gradient between north and south, a few hot states randomly distributed, or as an intermediate position, the emergence of convergence clubs. This paper tests for...