UNU-MERIT Working Papers Series

Knowledge convergence in European regions: Towards a cohesion?

Semih Akçomak, Erkan Erdil & Umut Yılmaz Çetinkaya #2018-027

In a knowledge economy, it is interesting to see that the concept of knowledge cohesion is a fertile soil for research. Despite the ongoing interest in investigating whether economic cohesion has been achieved in Europe there is no research that looks at knowledge cohesion. Though it is difficult to investigate such an abstract concept one can look at a more concrete concept such as convergence. Using the European Union Framework Programme data from 1984 to 2016 and simple network analysis and regressions we show that there are signs of knowledge convergence within the NUTS2 regions of Europe. Despite the fact that the top performers persist over the years convergence is much stronger among the less developed regions.

Keywords: knowledge, convergence, cohesion, diffusion, Europe

JEL codes: D83, O33, R11

Download the working paper (PDF)