Economic Cohesion Perspectives of the EU member Regions: A Non-parametric Approach

The question of economic convergence within the European Union enjoys enormous popularity and great interests are vested in forming the appropriate policies in order to enable a balanced and fair development of the member states and their regions of highly different historic- and economic background. Scientific literature approaches the topic from several aspects and argues about the results. Depending on the investigated time interval and spatial location contradictory conclusions were drawn on cohesion tendencies and on the success of EU cohesion policies. In the present study the non-parametric Mann-Whitney U-test and Wilcoxon signed rank test is applied on GDP- and NDI per capita values in order to investigate cohesion tendencies among member states and their regions that joined the EU before 2004 and afterwards.