Is there club convergence in Latin America?

King, Alan; Ramlogan-Dobson, Carlyn

Abstract

Previous studies of the income convergence hypothesis for Latin American economies indicate that almost all are not systematically closing their income gap with developed nations. The few studies to consider whether they instead exhibit club convergence—i.e., convergence to a steady-state equilibrium significantly inferior to that of the developed economies—offer little convincing evidence of this either. We argue that this reflects the limitations of their measure of relative income (which includes their sample’s average income) and/or the assumptions underlying the discrete-break unit-root tests they employ. By avoiding these limitations, we obtain evidence of two Latin American convergence clubs.

Citation

King, A., & Ramlogan-Dobson, C. (2016). Is there club convergence in Latin America?. Empirical economics, 51(3), 1011-1031. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00181-015-1040-x

• Acceptance Date: Oct 23, 2015
• Online Publication Date: Jan 6, 2016
• Publication Date: Nov 1, 2016
• Deposit Date: Feb 9, 2016
• Publicly Available Date: Feb 9, 2016
• Journal: Empirical economics
• Print ISSN: 0377-7332
• Electronic ISSN: 1435-8921
• Publisher: Springer Verlag
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 51
• Issue: 3
• Pages: 1011-1031
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00181-015-1040-x
• Keywords: Per capita income, Club convergence, Structural change, Fourier function
• Public URL: https://hull-repository.worktribe.com/output/385175
• Publisher URL: http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs00181-015-1040-x
• Additional Information: Authors' accepted manuscript of article published in Empirical economics, 2016, v.51, issue 3. The final publication is available at Springer via http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s00181-015-1040-x