Real Convergence in the European Union. The attempt to estimate the Production Function

Abstract

This paper aims at verifying to what extent the Solow model can explain real economic convergence among the countries of the enlarged European Union. We verify three variants of the model: the basic Solow model, the Solow model with human capital (the Mankiw-Romer-Weil model), and the Solow model with human capital and technological know-how. The analysis covers the 1993-2009 period. It turns out that the Solow models perform very well in explaining economic growth differences and real economic convergence of the EU-27 group. Based on the results of our study, we estimate the parameters that measure the speed of convergence as well as the production functions for our sample of countries. (original abstract)