Article ID Journal Published Year Pages File Type
990161 Structural Change and Economic Dynamics 2006 7 Pages PDF
Abstract

In a recently published paper, Hein and Truger [Hein, E., Truger, A., 2005. European monetary union: nominal convergence, real divergence and slow growth? Structural Change and Economic Dynamics 16, 7–33], state that real per capita income in the European Union has developed a long-run process of divergence (real divergence). We discuss their approach towards measuring cross-national income inequality and its evolution over time, and argue that there are good reasons to pursue alternative procedures. We show that alternative measures yield different conclusions concerning the convergence/divergence of prosperity across the EU. Especially, as the divergence result is driven by one or two countries with almost negligible population shares, accounting for population size implies that cross-national income dispersion in the EU has decreased at least since the mid-1990s.

Related Topics
Social Sciences and Humanities Economics, Econometrics and Finance Economics and Econometrics
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