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This paper investigates the β-convergence in the trade volumes of EU countries. We focus on a different approach to convergence analysis, namely trade's contribution to convergence. Neoclassical growth theory assumes there will be a convergence process among the economies, even in absence of trade. Trade relations might, however, speed up this process. We use panel data for trade volumes of 26 EU countries and test the presence and the speed of β-convergence pattern on SITC sectors 6 and 7 trade categories. The implied speeds of unconditional convergence of the export volume per capita are about 0.05-0.06 (implying half-lives around 12-13 years). When accounting for the country-or time-period specific effects, we can observe relatively high convergence rates (with half-lives somewhere around 2-4 years).

PROCHÁZKOVÁ LENKA, RADIMĚŘSKÝ MIROSLAV: The economic performance of regions in the CzechRepublic. Acta Universitatis Agriculturae et Silviculturae Mendelianae Brunensis, 2013, LXI, No. 7, pp. 2661-2667 Regional development in the Czech Republic contributed to the fact that at present none of the regions is signifi cant backward compared to other. Individual regions have shown among themselves certain diff erences. This applies in particular to the economic performance of regions. This paper introduce results of our research. Main aim of the work was to indentify economic performace aff ecting factors of regions NUTS 3 in Czech Republic. It was necessary to defi ne quantity of economic performance to meet this goal. We used them to create method of valuating economic performance of regions. We weighed quantities (e.g. GDP, unemployment rate, net disposable income) according to their importance. This procedure was applied to individual regions. We determined the level of economic performance of Czech regions. We present overview of factors and using statistical methods we test their importance to the economic performance of Czech regions.