ConvergenceClubs: A Package for Performing the Phillips and Sul's Club Convergence Clustering Procedure

The paper aims at investigating the impact of the Great Recession on per capita GDP convergence process across European regions and countries. Using the time-varying factor model developed by Phillips and Sul for the period 2000-2015 and two different merging procedures to identify clubs, we provide evidence of the diverging impact of the Great Recession "between" the higher and the lower convergence clubs at both regional and country levels as well as of the strengthening of the convergence process "within" most clubs. In addition, we add further evidence to the common belief of a "multi-speed" Europe by contrasting Eastern European countries' and regions' behavior visà-vis original European members' one, and by identifying the factors that affect club membership and resilience to the recent economic downturn. We find that the membership in the higher clubs and resilience to the Great Recession are positively affected by the presence of several local-specific factors and macroeconomic characteristics.

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“… 5 5 For additional details see also Phillips and Sul (2009), von Lyncker and Thoennessen (2017) and Sichera and Pizzuto (2019). …”

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confidence: 99%

Great Recession and club convergence in Europe: A cross‐country, cross‐region panel analysis (2000–2015)

Mazzola

Pizzuto

2020

Growth and Change

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“…5 Further, Phillips and Sul ( 2009) created a clustering algorithm to detect convergence clubs. Recently, Sichera and Pizzuto (2019) adapted Phillips and Sul's method for use in R. See Appendix 1 for a detailed description of the club selection method. This paper makes use of the method developed by Sul (2007, 2009) and programmed in R by Sichera and Pizzuto (2019).…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…This will expand on some of the past qualitative literature on unions and shed light on possible groups of states with high or low union membership. This method, ©Southern Regional Science Association 2021. especially since it has been recently programmed in R by Sichera and Pizzuto (2019), can be extremely useful to regional economists who may want to test conjectures about convergence among regions or test for groups of regions. The method can easily be adapted to investigate convergence or grouping questions across a variety of topics (for example: unionization levels, house prices, product prices, mortality rates).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Unionization and Convergence in the United States

Meszaros¹

2021

Review of Regional Studies

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Using data on U.S. state-level unionization from Hirsch et al. (2001) and the club convergence test developed by Sul (2007, 2009), this paper shows that U.S. states have distinct groupings in terms of the level of unionization. In particular, the states in the American South generally belong to their own low union density groups. Further, states in the Northeast (such as New York) and the Great Lakes region (Michigan, Ohio) tend to have high levels of unionization and form their own convergence clubs.

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“…An interesting aspect of the analytical framework provided by Phillips and Sul [ 23 ] is that the rejection of the null hypothesis of convergence at the full panel level does not imply evidence against convergence at the subgroup level within the panel. This approach has several advantages [ 32 ]. First, it allows for different time paths as well as individual heterogeneity.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Global Trends in Child Obesity: Are Figures Converging?

González-Alvarez

Lázaro-Alquézar

Simón-Fernández

2020

IJERPH

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Childhood obesity has become one of the most serious global health challenges of our time. The combined prevalence of overweight and obesity has rapidly increased worldwide during the last two decades, especially in some developing countries where obesity is reaching levels on a par with some industrialized countries, or even higher. This fast growth has occurred especially in countries in the midst of rapid social-economic transitions. Most international comparisons focus on the adult population while analyses focusing on the child population are more limited. Using the methodology developed by Phillips and Sul, this paper studies the worldwide evolution of children’s body mass index (BMI), overweight and obesity prevalence for a large sample of countries during the period 1975–2016. Our results indicate that the figures for BMI or the prevalence of obesity in different countries do not converge, while the opposite is the case for overweight prevalence in children. Furthermore, there is a non-linear relationship between obesity and income or human capital, indicating that low and middle-income countries require a strong initiative for health policies targeting obesity prevention.

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ConvergenceClubs: A Package for Performing the Phillips and Sul's Club Convergence Clustering Procedure

Cited by 40 publications

References 8 publications

Great Recession and club convergence in Europe: A cross‐country, cross‐region panel analysis (2000–2015)

Great Recession and club convergence in Europe: A cross‐country, cross‐region panel analysis (2000–2015)

Unionization and Convergence in the United States

Global Trends in Child Obesity: Are Figures Converging?

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