Convergence of income distributions: another measurement problem

According to EU-policy, the cohesion of the Community depends crucially on the convergence of per-capita incomes across EU member-states. By employing various indicators which are supposed to compare distributions on EU income-data, the paper shows that the EU-notion of cohesion faces a substantial measurement problem. Instead of arriving at a unique order, the indicators frequently yield conflicting results about the convergence of a particular distribution. The paper examines the reasons and their consequences for institutional choice in the European Union; thus approaching the cohesion versus conflict issue from an economic perspective. © 1997 Kluwer Academic Publishers,.