European Union and Romanian Tourism – ß and σ Convergence in the Economic Development Regions of Romania
Author:Gina Ionela Butnaru and Valentin Nită
JEL:D00, N90, R19, R39
DOI:
Keywords:β-convergence, σ-convergence, Romanian tourism, Economic Development
Regions of Romania
Abstract:
At present, both in Romania and in Europe, tourism tends to become one of the biggest
industries, with great development possibilities in the future. The economic development of
Romania including tourism benefits from the support of the European Union, and has the
purpose to reduce the gaps in this concern, compared to both the European Union average
and more developed countries. The purpose of this paper is to analyse β and σ convergence
in the 8 Economic Development Regions of Romania by a tourism approach. The concept
of β-convergence represents the process of quicker development of poor regions than the
rich ones, and σ-convergence is evaluating the process of decrease of regional economic
disparities in time. The analysis based on β-convergence was performed using econometric
modelling techniques of linear correlation. For σ-convergence, we measured the dispersion
of real GDPT per in habitant by the use of the variation coefficient t . The purpose is to
check the hypothesis according to which the β-convergence approach and the σ-
convergence concept can lead to different results for the Economic Development Regions
of Romania. The period analysed is between 2007 and 2013.