Albert Carreras is the Director of ESCI-UPF, a Professor in the Department of Economics and Business at Pompeu Fabra University, a full member of the Institut d’Estudis Catalans, and a member of the College of Economists of Catalonia.

Albert Busca holds a collaboration grant between the Ministry of Education and the Department of Economics and Business at Pompeu Fabra University (UPF) for research initiation. He is a graduate in Political and Administrative Sciences from Pompeu Fabra University.

Abstract:

We dig into the EU-Social Progress Index published in 2020 to explore its territorial/regional clustering patterns. Are EU internal frontiers –clusters- the same as those of the member States? Do they have other influences? What determines belonging to different clusters? Is there any resemblance between the GDP per capita and the SPI regional distribution? We divide the EU NUTS-2 map into clusters using hierarchical clustering. We look for the optimal number of clusters and we compare the outcome with State borders, paying attention to discrepancies or to State combinations. Our main finding is that the optimal clustering is two, and that they are very robustly defined. Another major finding is that the EU-SPI clustering reveals major discrepancies with the per capita GDP clustering. Some NUTS-2 regions perform in SPI terms much better than expected by per capita GDP. On the contrary, some NUTS-2 regions perform much worse than expected by per capita GDP. The discrepancies suggest major public policy successes and failures.

Working paper

Article at 5cèntims