Has EU membership lead to growth in the CEEC? : A study that examines the income convergence towards the EU-15

Sammanfattning: The European Union was created to promote peace and stability and evolved to become an economic union. Its member states are part of trade agreements where tariffs and quotas are abolished. Trade liberations lead to easier access of information and technology which in turn lead to faster growth. This study was made as we were interested to see if high level of economic integration, EU membership, has effected economic growth. The dependent variable we chose to study is GDP growth per capita. The time period included in the study is the years 1996-2011. In this study we are interested to see if higher level of economic integration has led to growth and income convergence in the Central and Eastern European. A multiple regression analysis has been conducted to see if EU membership have an effect on growth. In addition a beta convergence regression is carried out in order to see if the new member states are catching up to the EU income level. We found that joining the EU has no significant effect on growth. However the CEEC seem to enjoy higher level of price stability due to EU membership. However due to the lack of observations the results we received are inconclusive.