Acta academica karviniensia 2016, 16(1):5-16 | DOI: 10.25142/aak.2016.001

COMPETITIVENESS IN THE EUROPEAN UNION: A TREND TO CONVERGENCE?

Pavlína Balcarová
Mendelova univerzita v Brně, Provozně ekonomická fakulta, Zemědělská 1, 613 00 Brno, Email: pavlina.balcarova@mendelu.cz

The contribution verifies, whether the competitiveness of the European Union economies tends to converge or diverge. The competitiveness of a country is defined as the ability to create innovations. Innovations represent an important resource of the qualitative competitive advantage, which is crucial for sustainable competitiveness in the long term. We observed the composite indicator development in the time period 2000-2012 with focus on the trend dissimilarities in the European Union. We used a cluster analysis and beta and sigma convergence methods to the convergence/divergence tendency verification. The results of all three methods confirmed the converging trend of competitiveness in the European Union. We found out that initially less competitive economies are catching up with initially more competitive countries and the competitiveness of individual countries as well as the EU as a whole increase at the same time.

Keywords: beta convergence, cluster analysis, European Union, homogeneity, innovation, national competitiveness, sigma convergence, technology
JEL classification: F62, O32, O52

Received: February 15, 2016; Accepted: May 26, 2016; Published: March 30, 2016  Show citation

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Balcarová P. COMPETITIVENESS IN THE EUROPEAN UNION: A TREND TO CONVERGENCE? Acta academica karviniensia. 2016;16(1):5-16. doi: 10.25142/aak.2016.001.
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