Medium-term forecast of European economic sustainable growth using Markov chains

Abstract

Economic growth is a frequently analyzed aspect, both from theoretical and empirical standpoint, under the impact of the influence factors, while the issue of economic growth was studied by applying different methods and obtaining different results. In the case of EU28, the problem of economic convergence has to take into consideration the fact that the Member States are heterogeneous in terms of development and rate of growth. In the present paper, by using Markov chains we have made, a forecast of the GDP per capita evolution for the economies of the EU28 members, starting from the known time horizon – 1997-2016 as to approach a forecast horizon – 2017-2028. The results obtained show that the convergence process will be a slow one in the case of some Member States, especially in the Central and Eastern Europe. The future economic dynamics will intensify growth divergences, especially in the case of the European periphery, which will suffer minor modifications; the states with the most significant gaps will remain Bulgaria and Romania.