 MIXTURE MODELS, CONVERGENCE CLUBS, AND POLARIZATIONMaria Grazia Pittau, Roberto Zelli and Paul Johnson Review of Income and Wealth, 2010, vol. 56, issue 1, 102-122 Abstract: We argue that modeling the cross‐country distribution of per capita income as a mixture distribution provides a natural framework for the detection of convergence clubs. The framework yields tests for the number of component distributions that are likely to be more informative than “bump hunting” tests and includes a method of assessing the cross‐component immobility necessary to imply a correspondence between components and convergence clubs. Applying this approach to Penn World Data for the period 1960 to 2000 we find evidence of three component densities. We find little cross‐component mobility and so interpret the multiple mixture components as representing convergence clubs. We document a pronounced tendency for the strength of the bonds between countries and clubs to increase and show that the well‐known “hollowing out” of the middle of the distribution is largely attributable to the increased concentration of the rich countries around their component means. Date: 2010 Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:bla:revinw:v:56:y:2010:i:1:p:102-122 Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from Access Statistics for this article Review of Income and Wealth is currently edited by Conchita D'Ambrosio and Robert J. Hill More articles in Review of Income and Wealth from International Association for Research in Income and Wealth Contact information at EDIRC. |
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