103-134

• Kafousias, Dionysis, S.

In the last thirty years the literature on economic growth has been paid much attention to convergence versus divergence antithesis in productivity, income or in living standards, as measured by GDP per capita, that is whether and to what extent growth patterns have led countries or regions in economic terms nearer to each other or apart. Initially, the main conclusion seemed to favouring convergence which has been the dominant feature among the OECD countries, though, when the sample of countries was enlarged, divergence rather than convergence appeared to be the dominant effect. Regional growth and convergence are issues of profound research since the early 1990s, initiated at least partly by the development of New Growth Theory and New Economic Geography (NEG). The theoretical and empirical considerations of both theories are considered as the cornerstone ofregional growth, aside from their influence in the explanation of regional disparities’ evolution. Although considerable progress in the empirical context has been made, still nowadays new aspects alter the way we figure out the economic relations within space. Some developments incorporate endogenous growth in the New Economic Geography framework while others allow for interesting insights on the relationship between agglomeration, productivity1 and growth, favouring the idea that increasing regional disparities might be a source of higher growth at the national level. By the sametoken, there is a growing interest in the theoretical and empirical disciplines of regional and growth economics in the spatial dimension of growth and convergence. These new theories underpin the importance of spillover effects, whereas the relation between space and growth is being constantly under the light of growing awareness. Thus, spatial effects are increasingly recognised as an important feature of regional growth process with a basis in economic theory, whilst spatial econometric methods are capable to analyse the implication of new theoretical approaches in this respect.

• Economics and Business

• Economics

convergence, neoclassical growth endogenous theory, agglomeration economies, social capital, spillover effects, autocorrelation, spatial error, spatial lag

JEL classification: C21, C23, R11