Do natural resources define convergence clubs? Empirical evidence from the Kazakh regions

•We hypothesize that for the Kazakh regions natural resources play an important role in forming convergence clubs.•The emphasis is placed on different measures of resource abundance.•Regression tree analysis is used to test this hypothesis.•The results show that natural resource endowment rather than dependence defines convergence clubs.

This paper deals with the hypothesis that natural resources are important in forming convergence clubs. We check this hypothesis by applying a dependence and an endowment measure of natural resource abundance and a regression tree analysis. The results indicate that for the Kazakh regions natural resources do indeed play an important role in forming convergence clubs. It is further shown that natural resource endowment rather than resource dependence determines initial conditions and thereby convergence clubs.