Revisiting economic growth and real convergence in the post-communist countries

Meiyu Lu and Karsten Staehr ()
Additional contact information
Meiyu Lu: Technical University of Ostrava

Eurasian Economic Review, 2025, vol. 15, issue 1, No 4, 89-123

Abstract: Abstract This paper revisits the growth dynamics and real convergence for the 30 post-communist countries from the early transition in 1995 until 2023. All the countries have narrowed the income gap to Western Europe, but to very different degrees. Econometric analysis of beta convergence uncovers an average annual speed of convergence within all the post-communist countries of around 1%, which is below benchmark results for other emerging-market economies. There is however indication of group convergence for the Central and Eastern European countries, which exhibit an annual speed of beta convergence of around 5%. Endogenous cluster analysis confirms that these countries comprise a cluster that exhibits fast and consistent convergence, while most countries in the Balkans and from the former Soviet Union show slower and less consistent convergence dynamics. Analysis of conditional beta convergence shows that governance quality is a key conditioning variable that accounts for cross-country heterogeneity, which influences the estimated speed of convergence, while other variables, including reform intensity and political liberalisation, are unimportant as conditioning variables.

Keywords: Economic growth; Income convergence; Beta convergence; Economic transition (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O47 P27 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s40822-024-00308-5 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

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:spr:eurase:v:15:y:2025:i:1:d:10.1007_s40822-024-00308-5

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/economics/journal/40822

DOI: 10.1007/s40822-024-00308-5

Access Statistics for this article

Eurasian Economic Review is currently edited by Dorothea Schäfer

More articles in Eurasian Economic Review from Springer, Eurasia Business and Economics Society Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().