Income Convergence and trade Openness: Fuzzy Clustering and Time Series Evidence

Chad Stroomer () and David Giles
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Chad Stroomer: Department of Economics, University of Victoria

No 304, Econometrics Working Papers from Department of Economics, University of Victoria

Abstract: In the now extensive literature on the convergence of per capita income (output) across countries over time, there is surprisingly little attention paid to the role of international trade in goods and services. Some more recent studies have illustrated that standard trade theories provide no clear prediction as to the impact of trade liberalization on output convergence. These studies have also provided somewhat ambiguous empirical evidence regarding this relationship, under-scoring the need for additional results in this area. This paper uses both standard and new approaches to testing for convergence in order to explore the extent to which the degree of trade openness may affect output convergence among countries. Using annual time-series data for 88 countries from the Penn World Tables, we obtain somewhat mixed results, but on balance they are quite supportive of a positive relationship (though not necessarily causality) between trade openness and income convergence. These results also suggest certain directions that further research might take in order to shed more light on this important issue.

Keywords: Openness; international trade; output convergence; economic growth; time-series; fuzzy clustering (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C14 C22 F15 F43 O4 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 29 pages
Date: 2003-05-07
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-dev and nep-lam
Note: ISSN 1485-6441
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:vic:vicewp:0304

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