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