Regional convergence within particular country — An approach based on the regional price deflators

Abstract

This paper applies regional price deflators for Polish NUTS2 regions and US states in order to reassess regional income convergence within particular country. We find that the regional income disparities decrease significantly once we account for regional price differentials. Moreover, we prove that the application of regional price deflators has significant impact on the results of both σ and β-convergence analysis. They also influence the conclusions concerning the magnitude of spatial spillovers. The above results can have important policy implications, in particular concerning the EU Cohesion Policy financial allocations and the assessment of policy effectiveness.