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讲座简介：
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Has the progress of output convergence within the U.S. changed? This paper examines the output convergence among U.S. states for the last five decades by making several improvements over the extant literature. By applying a battery of convergence tests designed to capture nonlinear transitional dynamics to real output per worker data (i.e., nominal values deflated by state-level price), we find that output convergence has not been a feature of the continental U.S. since the 1970s. Instead, output convergence has proceeded among four subgroups within which states have certain characteristics in common. Our regression analysis suggests that state-level characteristics related to technology and human capital play an important role in accounting for the formation and composition of convergence clubs, in line with the prediction of recent theories of growth and development (e.g., Aghion et al. 2009, Gennaioli et al. 2013b). The level of technology, proxied by patents, turns out to be a consistently significant determinant even after controlling for endogeneity. Our result therefore lends credence to the view that frictions in the diffusion of technology and human capital led to clustering of states with different levels of output. |
