Growth and employment: comparative performance, convergences and co-movements

Marcello Signorelli

No 08/2005, Quaderni del Dipartimento di Economia, Finanza e Statistica from Università di Perugia, Dipartimento Economia

Abstract: As well-known, starting from the EU White Paper on growth, competitiveness and employment (1993), and continuing with the launch of the European Employment Strategy (1997) and the Lisbon Strategy (2000), two crucial objectives indicated by the European level emerged: (i) the increase of the GDP growth rates and (ii) the improvement of the employment intensity of growth. The aim of the paper is to discuss and investigate the compared performance, convergence and relationship of the following real variables: per-capita GDP (level and growth) and employment rate (level and growth). In the last decades an increasing part of the theoretical and empirical economic literature has been dedicated to the real convergence process. In order to better investigate the more recent period, in this paper we first present a brief review of the theoretical and empirical literature on real convergence (Section 2) and of the relationship between growth and (un)employment (Section 3). In Section 4, using Eurostat (regio) database for the period 1995-2003, a compared investigation of the (levels and changes in) per capita GDP and employment rates in EU-25 countries is followed by a convergence analysis for European aggregations (EU-25, EU-15, EMU-12 and 8-new-EU-members) at the following two (statistical) regional level: Nuts I (?- and Lowess ?-convergence) and Nuts II (?-, absolute and conditional ?-convergence). Besides, a preliminary comparative analysis for EU-15 countries has been dedicated to the co-movements between GDP and employment, and the employment intensity of growth, during the same period 1995-2003. Some of the main results of the paper highlighted (i) a high heterogeneity in European performance (in terms of GDP level, GDP growth, employment level and employment changes), (ii) the existence of complex “club convergence/divergence” across EU countries and regions, (iii) remarkable differences in the correlation between GDP growth and employment changes, and in the employment intensity of growth.

Keywords: GDP growth; employment; convergence; comparative performance (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J23 O47 P50 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 33 pages
Date: 2005-05-15
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (8)

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