Giuseppe Notarstefano

Countries agreeing to Euro-Mediterranean Partnership show different levels of development, so that they are far from converging in per capita GDP growth rates. As shown by literature, an important role in growth can be played by foreign direct investment (FDI). Beta and Sigma approaches to convergence are applied to prove the absence of gaps reduction in the area, and the importance of FDI in a context where less developed countries do not attract FDI as much as other developing countries. Persistency matrix and fuzzy clustering methods are then applied to verify the composition and stability in time of “convergence clubs”.