ConvergenceClubs

Description

ConvergenceClubs provides functions for clustering regions that form convergence clubs, according to the definition by Phillips and Sul (2009).

The main functions are:

• findClubs(): finds clubs of convergence, given a dataset with regions in rows and years in columns, returning an object of class convergence.clubs.
• mergeClubs(): takes as argument an object of class convergence.clubs and applies the clustering procedure to the convergence clubs contained in the argument, according to either Phillips and Sul (2009) or von Lyncker and Thoennessen (2016) procedure.

For class convergence.clubs, the following methods are available:

• summary(): shows the number of regions for each club of convergence and the number of divergent regions;
• print(): prints the convergence.clubs object, a list with information about convergence clubs (region ids, beta coefficient, p-value, ...) and divergent units;
• dim(): return a vector of two elements, representing the number of clubs and the number of divergent units;
• plot(): plots transition path.

Installation

To install the package from CRAN, simply run the following code in R:

install.packages("ConvergenceClubs")

Or, if you want to install the development version from GitHub:

# if not present, install 'devtools' package
install.packages("devtools")
devtools::install_github("rhobis/ConvergenceClubs")

Usage

library(ConvergenceClubs)

data("countryGDP")

# Cluster Countries using GDP from year 2000 to year 2014, with 2014 as reference year
clubs <- findClubs(countryGDP, dataCols=2:35, regions = 1, refCol=35, 
                    time_trim = 1/3, cstar = 0, HACmethod = "AQSB")
summary(clubs)

# Merge clusters using Phillips and Sul (2009) method
mclubs <- mergeClubs(clubs, mergeMethod='PS', mergeDivergent=FALSE)
summary(mclubs)

# Merge clusters using von Lyncker and Thoennessen (2016) method
mclubs <- mergeClubs(clubs, mergeMethod='vLT', mergeDivergent=FALSE)
summary(mclubs)


# Plot Transition Paths for all regions in each club and average Transition Path
# for all clubs
plot(mclubs)

# Plot Only average Transition Paths
plot(mclubs, clubs=NULL)
plot(mclubs, clubs=NULL, legend=TRUE)

More

• Please, report any bug or issue here.
• For more information, please contact the manteiner at roberto.sichera@unipa.it.