Economic Convergence in Central and Eastern Europe

- Presentation speakers
  - Andrei Radulescu, Transylvania Bank and Romanian Academy, Bucharest, Romania
Abstract:

The economic convergence represents the main rationale of the EU integration process. Over the past decades the CEE economies have been confronted with several structural changes, among which we mention: the transition to market economy, the negotiation of the EU entry and the incidence of the Great Recession. Overall, the region used to the leader of the EU in terms of both growth pace and convergence during 2000-2018. In this paper we apply standard econometric tools and use the Eurostat database, in order to analyze the EU economic convergence process across CEE (Visegrad and Romania) during 2000-2018. According to our results these countries should address the structural problems (labor market, banking sector, R&D, infrastructure, in order to improve the regional integration and to increase the resilience of the region during the incidence of a crisis.