Manufacturing industries in Northern Ireland and Great Britain: was there convergence during the 1949-92 period?

This paper uses detailed industry-level data for the UK regions which, base d on the standard cross-sectional regression model, suggests that 'strong' convergence was occurring during the period 1963-92, even though plotting t hese data and considering their variation over time would tend to suggest d ivergence rather than convergence has dominated. However, since there are s everal, rather fundamental drawbacks associated with the cross-sectional ap proach, a long time-series of data for Northern Ireland and Great Britain i s used to test for convergence directly, based on testing for unit roots. T he outcome is that more than half of the Northern Ireland industries consid ered experienced 'catch-up', while the rest (with the exception of the Text iles sector) experienced long-run convergence, i.e. they tracked their coun terparts in Great Britain over the period considered.