Prof. Philippe Jean-Pierre and prof. Sébastien Bourdin at the Spatial Warsaw Seminar
The lecture titled „Convergence process and peripheries: 40 years after the regional policy has been implemented and 20 years after Eastern regions have been admitted” will take place on 8 December at 17:00.
The presentation will be delivered by Prof. Philippe Jean-Pierre from the University of Reunion and Prof. Sébastien Bourdin from EM Normandie Business School. Prof. Jean-Pierre focuses in his research on economic development, regional development policies, economic tourism and innovation. Prof. Sébastien Bourdin, in turn, conducts research on regional development, ecological transition and environmental management.
We cordially invite all those interested in the subject to attend the seminar in room B111 at the Faculty of Economic Sciences. There is also an option to participate online. To receive the Zoom link, please contact Dr. Kateryna Zabarina at: QB3AuMp&#kNf8$Cs-Dy@rW4]#[99ozW@Zrg'FUx/5k6$^2{H{.
Below, we provide the abstract of the presentation.
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The analysis of the regional convergence process in Europe is not new. For several decades, the analysis of the convergence process of the least developed European regions has attracted the attention of many economists and geographers (Abreu et al., 2005; Dall'erba and Le Gallo, 2008; Mohl, 2016; Bourdin, 2019, Bourdin, Hermet, Jean-Pierre, 2022). These empirical studies on economic convergence often present contradictory results. The question underlying this work is not insignificant. Indeed, can we hope for an equalization of regional GDP per capita levels in Europe in the long term? The desire to reduce disparities between European regions is not new and was already included in the preamble to the Treaty of Rome (see Article 2 of the Treaty) (Faludi, 2016a; Mendez, 2011). The change in the name of the regional development policy objective, now called the Convergence Objective, reinforces this impression and shows that much remains to be done to consolidate the process of catching up with the European average.
Nevertheless, while this convergence dynamic appears to have been uneven over time, with periods of acceleration and deceleration, it has also been uneven across regions: regional groups have not been affected in the same way: the central regions, the eastern regions, the peripheral regions, and the outermost regions (ORs) of the European Union have experienced different rates of convergence. These disparities have been highlighted in the literature, which supports, for example, the importance of spatial factors such as distance and gravitational effects, or even great remoteness, such as that affecting the ORs, which are several thousand kilometers away (Bourdin, 2013). Similarly, several studies (Beine and Jean-Pierre, 2000; Diemer et al. 2022) have highlighted the existence of development traps leading to convergence clubs.
This interpretation of dynamics in the form of clubs also has the advantage of highlighting the risk of convergence policies being ill-suited to a homogeneous group of regions in convergence, whereas studies such as those by Diemer et al. (2022) emphasize the diversity of growth contexts.
For example, these authors show that even regions that were initially wealthy and located in the center can find themselves in a phase of stagnation, while less affluent regions further from the center can be associated with a more vigorous growth process. These results therefore seem to suggest that the associations between center-dynamic versus periphery-stagnation are not necessarily what we believe them to be. In other words, is the notion of peripheral regions as regions that are distant from the center and in difficulty still valid? Are peripheral regions always what we think they are?
This is the question that this article will attempt to answer by using threshold effects to distinguish between different growth/convergence regimes. More specifically, our work will complement the work of Beine and Jean-Pierre (2000) and Diemer et al. (2022) by using Hansen's threshold tests and drawing on the analysis of convergence dynamics proposed by Kant (2023).
In doing so, our work will help consolidate the diagnosis of convergence groups, highlighting both their composition and the growth/convergence mechanisms driving them. These advances will then lead us to confirm the hypothesis that peripheral regions are no longer necessarily those we believe them to be: while peripheral regions may have embarked on a process of sustained catch-up, central regions or regions belonging to countries at the heart of the EU may, on the contrary, be mired in a phase of stagnation.