In term of trade openess economic growth and convergence: An application on APEC countries

In terms of socio-economic disparities between countries and regions, where the subject is being reduced over time, and has an important place in the economic literature. These differences in the determination, especially GDP per capita and GDP figures coefficients of variation, including economic and social disparities revealed structural differences and the variables can be used. These differences increased or decreased and by convergence of the investigated region or a country may be described or by elimination. The purpose of this study, the validity of the convergence hypothesis, which showing the size of disparities between countries and regions is investigated by 19 APEC member countries. Before making modeling we classified the APEC member countries as "All Member Countries", "Large Economies" and "Small Countries" for each group as of method, generalized method of moments (GMM) panel data analysis used by annual data for 1970-2012 to test convergence hypothesis. Based on GMM tests results "All Member Countries" and "Large Countries" are converging. However, the evidence shows that there is diverging in "Small Countries". Keywords: Trade Openness, Economic Growth, Convergence.