Suchergebnisse

The paper examines the existence of convergence in the achieved levels of human development among countries of the European Union in the period 1995-2018. The aim of the research is to test the hypothesis, There is convergence in the achieved levels of human development among the integrated countries of the European Union. The Human Development Index is used as a measure of human development. Using regression analysis and coefficient of variation, the existence of band s-convergence is tested in this paper. In addition to the entire European Union, convergence is being tested for a group of developed countries of the European Union, as well as among so-called "New Member States". The obtained results indicate the existence of convergence (both b and s) in the achieved levels of human development in the European Union, where it is more pronounced and stable in the group of "New Member States" compared to the group of developed countries of the European Union. The main contribution of this paper is to increase the number of papers in the field of convergence in terms of human development, given that so far, a small number of papers have explored this topic.

The paper derives a normative model for partial fiscal equalisation based on a number of axioms and makes special allowance for the existence of a specific fiscal need in the jurisdictions. A simple version of this idealised equalisation scheme relates net contributions to the equalisation funds to deviations of a jurisdiction's gross income from average gross income and a jurisdiction's specific needs from average specific needs. The theoretical model is then empirically tested for the case of the European Union using data from 1986-97. It is found that most restrictions of the model appear to hold, in particular, relatively richer countries contribute more and those with greater fiscal needs, approximated by the importance of the agricultural sector, pay less. However, in the EU, an adjustment of net payments to changes in the actual importance of the specific fiscal need for a country is lacking.