Population weighted growth, convergence clubs and objective 1 regions performance: delors I and II packages

Abstract

This article analyses population weighted growth for the periods 1989–1993 and 1995–1999 in EU15 covering the period of time in which Delors I and II packages were operational. Two important results were found, first, the existence of a polarized growth either at the lowest or highest income levels that proves the existence of a twin-peak structure in the growth process and second a better performance of objective 1 regions than non-objective 1 regions during both periods of time, showing a tendency of objective 1 regions to catch up with the average EU15 income.

Acknowledgements

Jesús López-Rodríguez gratefully acknowledges financial support provided by Xunta de Galicia under the form of ‘Becas para estadias fora da Comunidade Autónoma de Galicia’ while working as a Visiting Scholar at the Department of Geography and Environment at LSE in 2005. I want to thank comments made by the anonymous referees of the journal that substantially improve the quality of the article. The usual disclaimer applies.

Notes

¹ Nomenclature of Territorial Units for Statistics (NUTS) was established by Eurostat in order to provide a single uniform breakdown of territorial units for the production of regional statistics for the EU.

² Decile (Quintile): any of nine (four) points that divided a distribution of ranked scores into equal intervals where each interval contains one-tenth (one-fifth) of the scores.

³ These regions got objective 1 status in the second Community Support Framework (1994–1999).