V. Gontis, K. Acus: Economies of Baltic countries are catching up and overcoming Visegrad Group
Following our previous papers about economic convergence of Baltic and Visegrad countries and long-term development forecasting, we want to review the latest Eurostat data about Europe and OECD economies in purchasing power standards (PPS). There are at least three reasons for that. First of all, we look for the best way to compare GDPs between countries. Secondly, we seek appropriate and the most reliable data to model international macroeconomic convergence processes. Finally, we want to draw your attention at the latest Eurostat data, which stresses extremely strong growth of Baltic countries.
Economic development of the European Union member states is a live international macroeconomic experiment. Theoretical analysis and possible modeling of these processes is a real challenge to all analysts and theorists. EU experience would be much more useful if the running economic processes were understood from the macroeconomic theory point of view. Noticed laws would be handful, solving issues of the EU economy in the future. In our opinion, observed regularities follow especially stable trends. The observed regularities of macroeconomic trends could be useful to forecast long-term economic development in the manner of natural sciences. This could be done in much larger extent, than, for example, in the weather long term forecasting. In a previous article "The phenomenon of economic growth of Baltic countries" we used World Bank data to point on a particular universality of economic growth in different regions. There we partly revise the data by adding Scandinavian countries to already reviewed Baltic and Visegrad regions. In the first graph we plot GDPs in USD, current prices, of these EU members’ and Norway from 1995 to 2012. The same data is show in three different ways to stress various growth trends.