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Testing for convergence and common features in international output: the case of the eastern caribbean countries

Recent years have witnessed a surge in economic, and to some extent, political integration of countries particularly at the regional level. The Caribbean countries have not been the exception to the rule as indicated by the existence of regional groups such as the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) and the Organization of the Eastern Caribbean States (OECS). By and large, the success of these (new) entities depends upon the degree of economic convergence of the national economies (Hall et al., 1992) as well as the existence of other common features such as common cycles. Convergence in the economic sense has been interpreted in various ways, including homogenization, catch-up, gross convergence, explained convergence, residual convergence, asymptotically perfect convergence and bounded convergence (Baumol, Nelson and Wolff, 1994, p.7). To the best of my knowledge, no consensus on the economic meaning of convergence has been reached yet although some measures are more used than the others. This paper uses the time series approach and, following Bernard and Durlauf (1995) defines convergence, at least in its strong form, as a special