Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic on EU Convergence

Josef Abrhám () and Milan Vošta
Additional contact information
Josef Abrhám: Department of Tourism, Metropolitan University Prague, Dubecska 900/10, Strašnice, 100 31 Praha, Czech Republic
Milan Vošta: Department of International Relations and European Studies, Metropolitan University Prague, Dubecska 900/10, Strašnice, 100 31 Praha, Czech Republic

JRFM, 2022, vol. 15, issue 9, 1-14

Abstract: The effects of the COVID-19 pandemic were global and led to an economic decline in most countries of the EU. The development and values of economic indicators varied from country to country and showed significant regional differences. The study evaluates the coverage of selected economic indicators in the Member States of the EU in the period 2010–2020. The analytical part is based on empirical statistical data. As a methodological procedure for testing the convergence of the EU, we compared the results of the coefficient of variation of GDP per capita in PPP and the unemployment rate. The findings of this study confirm the predicted development trends. The pandemic has reversed major convergence trends. Divergence within the EU was affected by a lower decline in GDP in the developed countries of the EU. The tendencies of social disparities in the unemployment rate were different from the development of the coefficient of variation of GDP per capita. The first year of the pandemic marked a decline in disparities between the countries of the EU. For future research, we recommend monitoring the development of convergence in the next pandemic period.

Keywords: COVID; convergence; European Union; regional disparities; unemployment; gross domestic product (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C E F2 F3 G (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/1911-8074/15/9/384/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/1911-8074/15/9/384/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jjrfmx:v:15:y:2022:i:9:p:384-:d:898715

Access Statistics for this article

JRFM is currently edited by Ms. Chelthy Cheng

More articles in JRFM from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().