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We investigate the convergence of Chinese real GDP per capita at regional and provincial levels, looking separately at the sub‐periods before and after major economic reforms and paying attention to the possibility of structural breaks induced by the ‘Great Leap Forward’. At the regional level we reject convergence pre‐ and post‐reform. At the provincial level we find evidence of a common regional trend for the Eastern region and again for the Central region, but not for the Western region. We conclude that, contrary to the policy objectives of the Chinese government, the regions of China have not shared a common development path.

The purpose of this paper is to analyse income inequality for a sample of 14 European countries and their composite regions using data from the Cambridge Econometrics regional dataset from 1980 to 2009. The purpose of the paper is to provide insight into the dynamics of regional and national cohesion among the EU‐14 countries studied.

Initially, inequality is decomposed using the Theil coefficient into between and within country inequality to assess the extent to which convergence has occurred. To investigate the underlying causes of the changes in inequality, the Theil coefficient is further decomposed to assess the contribution of productivity and employment‐population ratio differentials to inequality.

The results indicate that while between‐country inequality has declined, within‐country inequality has increased by approximately 50 percent. Subsequent decomposition indicates that while productivity levels among regions have converged, the employment‐population ratios have diverged substantially driving increasing levels of inequality. This suggests that while EU cohesion policies have reduced productivity inequalities they have had little effect in stimulating convergence of employment‐population ratios across regions.

The paper argues that national priorities, particularly in the context of the current European economic crisis, are likely to hinder European Union level policies to reduce income inequality at a regional level. This may result in further increases in regional inequality among European regions.

This paper's main contribution is to highlight how national convergence can lead to regional divergence being overlooked. The value of the paper is that it provides policy insights, based on empirical evidence, for European cohesion policy.

Understanding and simulating construction activities is a vital issue from a macro-perspective, since construction is an important contributor in economic development. Although the construction labor productivity frontier has attracted much research effort, the temporal and regional characteristics have not yet been explored. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the long-run equilibrium and dynamics within construction development under a conditional frontier context.

Analogous to the simplified production function, this research adopts the conditional frontier theory to investigate the convergence of construction labor productivity across regions and over time. Error correction models are implemented to identify the long-run equilibrium and dynamics of construction labor productivity against three types of convergence hypotheses, while a panel regression method is used to capture the regional heterogeneity. The developed models are applied to investigate and simulate the construction labor productivity in the Australian states and territories.

The results suggest that construction labor productivity in Australia should converge to stable frontiers in a long-run perspective. The dynamics of the productivity are mainly caused by the technology utilization efficiency levels of the local construction industry, while the influences of changes in technology level and capital depending appear limited. Five regional clusters of the Australian construction labor productivity are suggested by the simulation results, including New South Wales; Australian Capital Territory; Northern Territory, Queensland, and Western Australia; South Australia; and Tasmania and Victoria.

Three types of frontier of construction labor productivity is proposed. An econometric approach is developed to identify the convergence frontier of construction labor productivity across regions over time. The specified model can provides accurate predictions of the construction labor productivity.

The study of regional income differences has been a matter of considerable debate and empirical testing for many years. More than three decades ago, Easterlin suggested that convergence of regional income levels ought not be held as a certain and inevitable result of the process of trade and economic development. He pointed out that while trade and free movement of labor may exert some pressure towards convergence of wages and income, there are other dynamic processes that can thwart the equilibrating effects of free trade in resources and goods. The notion that free trade and efficient markets ensure long‐run equilibrium among regional income flows in a changing environment has been challenged more vigorously in recent years. Eberts has suggested that incomplete information and mismatch between worker skills and job requirements, and institutional barriers to mobility often lead to incomplete adjustment in wages and persistent differences in regional income levels. This paper contends that swift convergence of regional income flows to a steady state cannot materialize unless investments in human capital and research are uniform across regions. In the context of the endogenous growth theory, convergence of per capita income is not synonymous with convergence of total factor productivity. As Abramovitz has pointed out, even if total factor productivity across regions show convergence, demographic and investment factors may inhibit complete convergence in per capita income.

This paper aims to propose that a Neave-Worthington Match Test for Ordered Alternatives is a simple, non-parametric test that can be used to consider Gibrat’s law. Whether the law, that states that the proportional rate of growth is independent of absolute size, is supported by regional house price growth rates is considered. The Match Test is further used to test the applicability of beta-convergence and dual economy models to a house price context.

The Match Test relates an actual rank order with an expected one. Gibrat’s law implies house price growth rates are independent of the absolute price levels. Beta-convergence posits that growth rates are inversely related to the initial price level. With a divergent system, there is a direct relationship between size-order and growth rates. As such, the Match Test is used to test alternative models of size-growth relationship.

Rather than convergence, there is a tendency to diverge across the UK, but not in Eire. That said, the size of growth shocks is related to price level on the upswing of a price cycle, but not in the down. Assigning the high-priced regions of the two islands into core and the rest into a periphery, total matching is dominated by the capital cities’ growth. The sigma-convergence observed in British house prices is likely to be associated with slower beta-divergence, not a convergent system. The law of Gibrat is not found to apply in a regional house price context.

This work only covers two countries and nineteen regions. Gibrat’s law in regional house prices may be better examined using a multi-country analysis.

As the law of Gibrat is not found to apply in a regional house price context and core-regions appearing to dislocated, this has interesting implications for growth trend analysis and the claim of cointegration, which should be explored further. In particular, the level-growth relationship in the cyclical price upswing points to a ratcheting of differentials between high and low house price regions. The common trends in the long run may result from corrective periodic crashes. Not an ideal mechanism for policymakers.

To the best of the author’s knowledge, this paper makes a novel use of the Neave-Worthington test in the realm of regional convergence-divergence and in the first consideration of the law of Gibrat in a house price context across two countries.

This paper aims to examine the convergence in per-capita income (measured as per-capita net state domestic product) of regions in India during the period 1990–1991 to 2017–2018. Two separate analyses have also been done for the sub-periods, i.e., 1990–1991 to 2003–2004 and 2004–2005 to 2017–2018, to find out the effect of the second phase of economic liberalization in India.

In a panel data study, the estimation of absolute and conditional beta (β)-convergence and sigma (σ)-convergence across 17 Indian regions have been done. To measure the dispersion of per-capita income across the regions in India, the standard deviation of logs, Gini coefficient, Mehran measure, Piesch measure, Kakwani measure and Theil index have been estimated. In addition to this, these indices have been regressed over time.

This study finds the presence of absolute and conditional β-convergence; the regions with low initial per-capita income have grown faster than the regions with high initial per-capita income. Further, this study finds that foreign direct investment (FDI) inflow and the availability of power enhance growth across regions. However, this study finds the presence of σ-divergence, which indicates that the economic inequality among the regions in India has widened over the periods, calling for policy interventions to promote growth in the backward regions through the promotion of FDI inflow and the availability of power.

This study highlights the rising economic inequality among the regions in India by analyzing the latest available data through appropriate econometric techniques.

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.

The purpose of this paper is to study the dynamics of the distribution of per capita income of Indian states in the post‐reform period, in order to identify trends towards convergence‐club formation, polarization or stratification during this period.

The authors adopt the “distribution dynamics” framework that involves estimating kernel density functions, stochastic kernels and ergodic distributions in order to identify these trends.

The results show that there is polarization in India in the post‐reform period and this is due to the contrary growth dynamics of the middle‐income states resulting in the “vanishing middle” of the distribution.

This is the first study that highlights the contrary growth dynamics among the middle‐income states as the driving force behind the polarization of Indian states in the post‐reform period.

Innovation convergence is critical to national or regional economic growth patterns. This article provides a systematic review of innovation convergence research through qualitative discussions combined with bibliometric methods. Through this article, researchers interested in the field of innovation convergence can quickly understand the development of the field, quickly identify authors and publications with significant impact, and collaborative networks in the field.

This article is based on the relevant literature included in the WOS database from 1990 to 2021, using Citespace, Gephi and other software to conduct a systematic bibliometric analysis of the research in the new convergence field.

This research shows that the second half of the twentieth century was a boom period for research on economic convergence. 2. The subject foundation of innovation convergence research mainly includes mathematics, economics, political science and computational science. 3. The journals that publish research in this field are widely distributed, including the fields of economics, natural sciences and complex sciences. 4. The research in the field of innovation convergence is inseparable from the research in the field of economic growth.

This study may help others to understand the development history and research trends of the innovation convergence field, as well as the literature and cooperative scientific research institutions that have an important influence.

This paper aims to use Markov switching vector auto regression (MSVAR) methods to examine UK house price cycles in UK regions at NUTS1 level. There is extensive literature on UK regional house price dynamics, yet empirical work focusing on the duration and magnitude of regional housing cycles has received little attention. The research findings indicate that the regional structure of UK exhibits that UK house price changes are best described as two large groups of regions with marked differences in the amplitude and duration of the cyclical regimes between the two groups.

MSVAR principal component analysis NUTS1 data are used.

The housing cycles can be divided into two super regions based on magnitude, duration and the way they behave during recession, boom and sluggish periods. A north-south divide, a uniform housing policy and a monetary policy increase the diversion among the regions.

Markov switching needs high-frequency data and long time spans.

Questions a uniform housing policy in a heterogeneous housing market. Questions the impact of monetary policy on a heterogeneous housing market. The way the recovery of the housing market varies among regions depends on regional economic performance, housing market structure and the labour market. House price convergence, beta-convergence.

No such work has been done looking at duration and magnitude of regional housing cycles. A new econometric method was used.