CROSS-COUNTY INTERNAL MIGRATION AND CONVERGENCE
                      IN ROMANIA


                       Daniela Bunea, Bucharest Academy of Economic

ABSTRACT: Research on internal migration can be divided into two directions: identifying its
determinants and/or assessing its consequences. Migration is bidirectional. i.e. can be
affected by and can affect socio-economic disparities within a country. On one hand, the
determinants of internal migration can be numerous and their analysis is very complex and,
on the other hand, migration should have, at least theoretically, some influence on income
and unemployment convergence, i.e. disparities reduction. The objectives of this paper are to
evaluate the level of internal migration in Romania using county data and to assess its impact
on convergence, using various methods, both statistical and econometric. The main results
point out at: very low levels of migration and relative small differences among them, no
influence of migration on GDP divergence and extremely low on unemployment convergence.

Keywords: internal migration, inequality indexes, convergence, non-linear model, panel data model

JEL Codes: J61, R11, R15