Economic Convergence in the EU: A Complexity Approach

Abstract

This paper examines the effect of economic complexity on economic growth in the context of the EU countries. Our results suggest that a group of countries in the EU whose economic complexity exceeds a certain threshold tend to converge to levels of income corresponding to their measured complexity. On the other hand, the interaction of the current account deficit with economic complexity has important effects on growth for a second group of countries with lower levels of complexity. Since we also find that income convergence is faster within the first group, we argue that convergence is much faster for countries whose economic complexity exceeds a certain threshold.