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“It should also be noted that the objective of convergence and equal distribution, including across under-performing areas, can hinder efforts to generate growth. Contrariwise, the objective of competitiveness can exacerbate regional and social inequalities, by targeting efforts on zones of excellence where projects achieve greater returns (dynamic major cities, higher levels of general education, the most advanced projects, infrastructures with the heaviest traffic, and so on). If cohesion policy and the Lisbon Strategy come into conflict, it must be borne in mind that the former, for the moment, is founded on a rather more solid legal foundation than the latter” European Commission (2005, p. 9)Adaptation of Cohesion Policy to the Enlarged Europe and the Lisbon and Gothenburg Objectives.

With the growth of income at the global level, the World Bank data show that there are rising levels of income disparity across countries, groups, regions and within the countries. This fact otherwise hints at the inter-country divergence in incomes, particularly between the developed and developing countries of the world. This chapter, therefore, attempts to examine the convergence or divergence in credit, GDP and HDI across the 10 selected countries for the period of 1990–2019 applying the neoclassical growth approach and the time series approach. The results of the exercise in line with the neoclassical theories on absolute convergence and sigma convergence show that the countries are unquestionably converging in GDP and HDI with mixed results in case of credit. The results of convergence in GDP and HDI in all the countries and their developed and developing counterparts provide a possible explanation as to why the cross countries’ income inequalities as well as world inequality in income and development are reducing over time. On the other hand, the results of the time series approach display that credit and HDI are converging in both absolute and conditional terms but the countries are converging in conditional terms only for GDP. Thus, the claims of the World Bank are not valid for the selected countries in the chapter, rather, they can be verified by taking other countries and groups into consideration.

Forestry is an integral part of an economy. It not only maintains the balance of the ecosystem but provides sustainable livelihood to the forest-fringe dwellers, apart from being a huge source of revenue for the government. Hence, proper management of the forest resources is an important concern for the economists. On the other hand, convergence of natural resources is one of the hot cakes of discussion for the economists. In this study, the authors have considered three forest regions of West Bengal; these three being the largest forest areas hold an important position in West Bengal’s economy. Here, the authors have considered the whole of dryland forestry that covers the arid and semi-arid districts of western part of the state. They have also considered the forestry of Jalpaiguri and Cooch Behar districts that cover the sub-Himalayan forestry of North Bengal and mangrove forestry of South 24 Parganas district. The authors have used time-series data for the time period 1980–2019 and performed the Absolute Beta Convergence and Sigma Convergence Analysis as well as Conditional Beta Convergence of the total forest products of these three regions. In this study, the authors have found the existence of both forms of beta convergence but for variations, a divergence has been observed. The authors have also used the data from 2000 to 2019 on various aspects of income from forestry and performed the three forms of tests, like that of total forest products and observed similar type of results, that is, beta convergence of both forms but sigma divergence. The findings of this study ask for serious steps by the government bodies, since the decreasing rates are the causes of worries.

The investment development path of emerging markets’ MNEs is significantly different from the developed (TRIAD) world’s MNEs; BRIC MNEs seem to have taken a different trajectory on account of various political and economic reasons, ranging from the ‘forms of entry’ to ‘country-specific advantages’ (Tulder, R. V. (2010). Toward a renewed stages theory for BRIC multinational enterprises? A home country bargaining approach. In K. P. Sauvant, G. McAllister, & W. A. Maschek (Eds.), Foreign direct investments from emerging markets: The challenges ahead (pp. 61–74). New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan). Yet, some believe that in the long run the internationalization strategy of the developed world MNEs and BRIC MNEs will converge. Internationalization strategies as measured by OFDI depend on various macroeconomic determinants such as income, interest rate, openness of the economy, etc. The chapter intend to highlight, the significant difference between these two groups of countries on account of diverse political reforms towards internalization of firms, yet see if these different countries might converge.

Regression analysis examines the significance of the role of home government by testing the effect of governance indicators; that is voice and accountability, on OFDI. It further, tests for convergence of internationalization strategies of the two historically divergent groups, also, it tests convergence amongst the BRIC nations. Along with forecasting, time series analysis is also employed to examine convergence using univariate sigma convergence techniques.

Impact of voice and accountability is significant but it hinders OFDI for BRIC nations, while it promotes OFDI for TRIAD & ALL. Moreover, the analysis found the existence of convergence, that is BRIC will catch up with TRIAD, but though convergence exists amongst BRIC if we take a long span of time (45 years), it is absent in short span of time (19 years), as lately BRIC have shown divergent tendency.

Small sample size in multivariate regression analysis. Also, the governance indicator, that is voice and accountability, is perception based, and missing gaps in data for governance indicator is filled using interpolation.

Empirically testing the convergence of BRIC nations with the developed world. A univariate time series analysis is undertaken to understand each country’s heterogeneous FDI outflows and to address the research gap in existing forecasting literature. In addition, the comparison specifically between the Emerging Market Economies, that is the BRIC nations and the developed world gives some useful insights. This chapter ascertains the impact of governance indicator on OFDI; empirical literature shows such analysis for IFDI & FDI, but OFDI is rarely been dealt with.

Like the cross-country convergence or divergence analysis in incomes to address the global phenomenon, the same analysis is also required to be done in the case of a group of states within a national territory. Further, it is also required to see whether convergence or divergence in incomes of the states is attributable to the convergence or divergence in their allocations of bank credits. Thus, this chapter aims at examining whether the selected major states in India are converging or diverging in the allocations of bank credit, and if so, what will be the magnitudes of decreases or increases in the level of disparities and inequalities in credit allocations. This study concludes that there is a clear diverging tendency of credit allocations of the states of India during the post-reform period so far as the absolute convergence hypothesis of the neoclassical theory is concerned. Further, in terms of the framework of σ convergence, the study observes that all phases of the Indian economy have produced converging paths of the inter-state credit allocations, and the path becomes diverging during the post-reform phase. Based on the quantifications of the magnitudes of disparities and inequalities in terms of CV, C4 concentration, HHI and Gini values, this study thus reveals that there are significant increases in the levels of disparities and inequalities in the allocations of credit to the states from the pre-reform to the post-reform phases. Therefore, the persistence of divergence in income or rising income inequality during the phase of the major reform program in India may be due to the persistence of divergence and rising inequality in the allocation of bank credit.

Group communication scholarship has flourished in recent years and several insightful and valuable perspectives have been articulated. This chapter will review theories and perspectives on group communication that have emerged after 2000 (group participation, processual communication networks, communication and teamwork, leadership and communication, sequences and cycles in decision making and problem-solving processes, interventions to improve group performance). Some of these have been articulated formally as theories, while others are more loosely stated and present a point of view on group communication. Classical theories of group communication, including functional theory, symbolic convergence theory, structuration theory, and developmental theories were reviewed in Poole (1999) and are not covered here.

In this chapter, the author provides empirical research that supports the implementation of DLPs as programs that provide cogitative learning, high academic achievement, and the opportunity to be competitive in a global economy for all students – including culturally and linguistically diverse students – in order to achieve education equity. The author utilizes Arizona as an example of education policy that excludes and further marginalizes language minority students by requiring English proficiency as a requirement to be part of Dual Language Programs (DLPs). Furthermore, the author frames the current education climate and language policy affecting DLPs through an Interest Convergence theoretical lens.

Choosing Varieties of Capitalism as the title of their 2001 edited volume, Peter Hall and David Soskice monopolized a label that was much too broad for the project they were actually reporting. Their project was in line with a style of research, which may be called “bringing yet another factor back in”. That term stems from another pioneering edited volume emerging – like Hall and Soskice's volume – from the Harvard circuit: Evans, Rueschemeyer, and Skocpol's (1985) Bringing the State Back In. Following that volume, a number of other factors were “brought back in”: classes, geopolitics, finance and so on.