Estimation of the Spatial Spillover Effects of Economic Growth in Adjacent Countries of Caspian Sea: Spatial Dynamic Panel Data Approach

The purposes of this paper are the investigation of convergence hypothesis for GDP per labor in the presence of spatial dependence, and estimation of the spatial spillover effects of economic growth among the 11 adjacent countries of Caspian Sea during 1990 to 2010. Hence, the spatial Solow model has been estimated in the framework of spatial dynamic panel data. The results indicate that conditional beta convergence hypothesis is true for the countries under investigation and every country with average speed of 26.2% moves in the balanced growth path towards its own steady state. Moreover, according to the spatial Durbin model, there is a positive spatial autocorrelation of per labor GDP among adjacent countries of Caspian Sea; if the weighted average of neighboring countries per capita labor GDP of a country increases one percent, average per capita income of the country's labor force will raise 0.75 percent. Deepening regional cooperation and the development of common markets in order to gain more economic benefits are the two important policy proposed in this study.