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This paper aims to examine the per capita income convergence of 57 member countries of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) over the period 1990–2017 and to investigate the determinants of convergence club formations.

The authors applied the methodology of Phillips and Sul (2007, 2009) to identify the convergence clubs and estimated several-ordered logit models to determine the key drivers.

The results support existence of two convergence clubs and one diverging unit, indicating that 30 and 26 member countries form two separate groups converging to their own steady-state paths. They also suggest a significant productivity divergence between these clubs. The authors showed that the number of convergence clubs started to decline after the global financial crisis in 2008. Moreover, they found that fixed capital formation, education and political stability are key drivers of convergence club membership.

There is a strong need for large-scale policy interventions to close the gap between leading and lagging clubs of the OIC. A substantial investment in human and physical capital seems necessary for lower-income OIC countries.

This is the first empirical study on the existence of convergence clubs among member countries of the OIC.

This paper aims to explore convergence of accounting standards across worldwide adopted measures to investigate whether countries that have not completely adopted International Accounting Standards across the globe have displayed a tendency to act so.

The new panel convergence methodology, developed by Phillips and Sul (2007), is employed.

The empirical findings suggest that countries form distinct convergent clubs, albeit on a limited prevalence, yielding support to the notion that on a global basis firms and countries have initiated processes that will eventually lead them to a uniform pattern of employing common accounting standards.

These findings have substantial implications on a firm level, mainly for differences in accounting quality as well as for differences in their cost of capital, thus leading the regulatory authorities to opt for further improvements in financial reporting.

The novelties of this paper first, stem from the fact that it is the first time in the relevant literature that an empirical study attempts to formally measure whether the accounting world exhibits a tendency for accounting standards convergence or whether tactics and policies remain stagnant, acquiring drastic policy measures to speed up the convergence process. In addition, this study employs the implementation of the new methodology of panel convergence testing. This methodology has several appealing characteristics.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the convergence analysis of public debt among Indian states using annual data from 1990‒1991 to 2014‒2015.

The paper tests this hypothesis using club convergence technique propounded by Phillips and Sul (2007).

The results reveal the existence of debt divergence for overall Indian states. States are formed into four clubs on the basis of their level of debt, and three clubs support the hypothesis of club convergence. Further, the total public debt decomposes into three compositions such as market loans, bank loans and loans and advances from the central government. The existence of convergence is found for market loans and bank loans; however, the presence of divergence is found in case of loans and advances for overall states.

Since public debt plays an important role for fiscal health of the Indian states, findings of this study suggest to squeeze the fiscal consolidation further for Indian states whose debts as a percentage to gross state domestic product are on the higher side. Further, the examination of debt convergence helps to manage debt level among the states because heavy dependence on public debt could retard investment and economic growth.

Whereas bulk of empirical studies emphasize on examining the linkage between public debt and economic growth, and issue on debt sustainability across Indian states, examination of convergence of debt and its compositions (markets borrowings, bank loans and loans and advances from the central government) among the Indian states is scanty.

The purpose of this study is to examine whether the electricity consumption patterns across Indian states do converge.

This study considers 18 Indian states spanning over the period 1970-1971 and 2014-2015, using the recently developed Phillips and Sul panel convergence technique that accounts the multiple steady states.

The results provide the following insights. First, the authors find evidence of convergence in electricity consumption among all Indian states. This suggests that electricity consumption patterns for Indian states are converging to a common steady state. Second, to provide broader insights, we further investigate the convergence in electricity consumption among user groups such as agriculture, industry, commercial, domestic and miscellaneous. The results reveal that commercial, domestic and miscellaneous groups are also converging. Third, the non-convergence patterns in agriculture and industry enable us to investigate the possibility of clubs or the multiple common steady states. The results indicate the occurrence of three clubs in case of agriculture and two clubs in case of the industry. Fourth, this study also inspects the relative speed of convergence among the user groups. The results reveal the higher speed of convergence in case of the domestic user group.

The findings enable policymakers to formulate an appropriate energy policy to accommodate the future electricity demand across Indian states and prioritize low electricity consumption states so that they receive a greater share.

This is the first study that examines the convergence in electricity consumption across Indian states at aggregate and user groups using a new panel club convergence technique.

The purpose of this paper is to examine global trajectories, dynamics, and tendencies of software piracy to ease the benchmarking of current efforts toward harmonizing the standards and enforcements of intellectual property rights (henceforth IPRs) protection worldwide.

For that purpose, the authors estimate dynamic panel data models for 99 countries over the period 1994-2010.

The main finding suggest that, a genuine timeframe for standardizing IPRs laws in the fight against software piracy is most feasible within a horizon of 4.3-10.4 years. In other words, full (100 percent) convergence within the specified timeframe will mean the enforcements of IPRs regimes without distinction of nationality or locality within identified fundamental characteristics of software piracy. The absence of convergence (in absolute and conditional terms) for the World panel indicates that, blanket policies may not be effective unless they are contingent on the prevailing trajectories, dynamics and tendencies of software piracy. Policy implications and caveats are also discussed.

It is the first attempt to empirically assess the convergence of IPRs systems across countries.

Innovative undertakings play a critical role in the economic value creation and wealth generation of a nation. This paper aims to contribute to the literature that positions innovation at the core of the tourism industry in the context of emerging markets.

The authors adopt a case study approach and draw on secondary sources of data to examine how the UAE is reaping the benefits of innovation to transform itself into a leading international leisure and entertainment hub.

The strategy of significant financial investment in complex mega-projects and major infrastructure development have offered the UAE a relative advantage over other industry giants worldwide. Nonetheless, the local government should continue tapping into the multiple and diverse opportunities that product/service and process innovation has to offer if the UAE ambitions to enhance its competitiveness and acquire the status of a global tourism hub.

While most research efforts to date focused on Western markets, this study contributes to the development of a knowledge base about the role of innovation in the tourism industry in emerging market settings.

The purpose of this study is to examine the club convergence of Financial integration (FI) in the case of 60 countries from 1970 to 2015. FI plays a vital role in economic growth through sharing the risk between countries, cross-border capital association, investment and financial information. It also leads to the efficient allocation of capital and capital accumulation, thereby improving the systematic growth and productivity of the economy. Literature on examining the convergence hypothesis of FI is scarce.

This study applies the clustering algorithm to identify club convergence, advanced by the Phillips and Sul test, which enables the identification of multiple steady states or club convergence, unlike beta and sigma convergences.

The findings indicate the non-convergence when all 60 countries were taken together. This highlights that the selected countries' have unique transition paths in terms of FI. Hence, the authors implement the clustering algorithm, and the estimation shows that 56 countries are categorised into three different clubs. However, for the rest of four countries, the results are sort of ambiguous, favouring neither convergence nor divergence.

On the basis of three country clubs, Club 1 presents the model countries such as the Netherlands, Singapore and Switzerland. The Club 2 and Club 3 countries can start making moves towards the model countries by making policy adaptations for trade, finance and business facilitation.

The existing literature provides a plethora of studies investigating the convergence of stock markets, exchange rates and equity markets, but studies on the convergence of FI, particularly across the countries, are scarce. This study contributes by bridging this gap. The study is unique in its type as it takes into account the multiple steady states or club convergence. This study also contributes in policymaking by suggesting Club 1 countries (the Netherlands, Singapore and Switzerland) as the model ones for the FI.

This paper investigates the per-capita output club convergence in case of 120 countries for the period 1995–2015. Further, we disaggregate per-capita output into three broad sectors such as agriculture, industry, and service and investigate the convergence hypothesis.

The paper tests this hypothesis using the Phillips and Sul panel club convergence technique.

Our findings are as follows: (1) our results indicate the evidence of output divergence for the full sample; (2) when countries are divided into different clubs, the results exhibit the sign of per capita output club convergence both for aggregate and three major sectors. Further, this study confirms that industry's per capita output is the main driver for aggregate per-capita output club convergence in case of club 1. For club 2, agriculture's per capita output is a primary source for aggregate per capita output club convergence. Likewise, in the case of clubs 3 and 4, we find the service sector's per capita output is the main component for aggregate per-capita output club convergence; (3) both the service and industry sectors are major drivers for aggregate per-capita output club convergence.

This study suggests to the policymaker that sector-specific policies need to be adopted to boost the per-capita output growth by improving the performance of each of the sectors across the countries.

Notwithstanding, there are many studies that examine the output convergence using a notion of beta and sigma convergence, but studies regarding per capita output club convergence both at the aggregate and sectoral level are scanty.

This paper aims to examine the convergence pattern of residential house prices in a panel of 55 major cities in Turkey over the period between 2010 and 2018 and to investigate the determinants of convergence club formations.

The authors applied the log t-test to identify the convergence clubs and estimated ordered logit model to determine the key drivers.

The results suggest that there are five convergence clubs and confirm the heterogeneity of the Turkish housing market. Istanbul, the commercial capital, and Mugla, an attractive tourist destination, are at the top of the housing market and followed by the cities located in the western part, particularly along the Aegean and Mediterranean coasts of Turkey. Moreover, the ordered logit model results point out that the differences in employment rate, climate, population density and having a metropolitan municipality play a significant role in determining convergence club membership.

Large-scale policy measures aiming to increase employment opportunities in rural cities of central and eastern provinces and providing lower land prices and property taxes in the metropolitan cities of Turkey can help mitigate some of the divergence in the house prices across cities.

The novelty of this study lies in employing a new data set at the city level containing 55 cities in Turkey, which is by far the largest in terms of city coverage among emerging market economies to implement the log t-test. It also contributes to the literature on city-specific determinants of convergence club formation in the case of an emerging economy.

The main purpose of this paper is to examine the convergence hypothesis of House Price Index (HPI) in the case of 18 major Indian cities for the period 2014–2019.

To attain the authors main goal, this study applies a clustering algorithm advanced by Phillips and Sul. This test creates a club of convergence based on the growth of the cities in terms of HPI.

The study findings show the existence of two convergence clubs and one non-convergent group. Club 1 includes the cities with high HPI growth, whereas club 2 comprises of cities with least HPI growth. Cities belonging to the non-convergent group are neither converging nor diverging.

This study findings will benefit home buyers, sellers, investors, regulators and policymakers interested in the dynamic interlinkages of house price (HP) among Indian cities.

The majority of the studies are conducted in the case of China at the province or city levels. Furthermore, in the case of India, none of the studies has investigated the HP club convergence across Indian cities. Therefore, the present study fills this research gap by examining the HP club convergence across Indian cities.