IS THERE CONVERGENCE ACROSS COUNTRIES? A SPATIAL APPROACH.

We analyze convergence across countries over the last half century as a result of globalizing forces. Drawing on theories of modernization, dependency, the world-system, political trade blocs, and the world-society, we consider economic, demographic, knowledge, financial, and political dimensions of convergence. Using a new methodology, we calculate the minimum volume ellipsoid encompassing different groupings of countries, finding that during the 1960-2009 period, countries have not evolved significantly closer or similar to one another, although groups of countries based on their core-periphery status or membership in trade blocs exhibit increasing internal convergence and divergence between one another.