Is Spain meeting its goals of real convergence with EU partners? In what respects are these goals realistic or Utopian? What is Spain´s current situation and future prospects? “Capitalización y crecimiento de la economía española (1970-1997). Una perspectiva internacional comparada” sets out to answer these and other questions about the performance of the Spanish economy in comparison with the world´s most advanced countries and, particularly, those of the European Union.

The book devotes much of its time to an issue central to specialists´ and politicians´ concerns regarding the comparative performance of today’s increasingly interrelated economies: the issue of convergence. The problem of convergence – a variant of the broader problem of inequality – is looked at from multiple standpoints: considering different aggregate variables and the productive characteristics of particular sectors, comparing the world’s main economic blocs (Europe, United States and Japan) and, above all, analysing the relative position of Spain vs the most advanced countries.

This volume is part of a broad-ranging project developed jointly in the past few years by the BBVA Foundation and the Instituto Valenciano de Investigaciones Económicas (Valencian Economic Research Institute), and which has led to the publication of various studies on the capitalisation and growth of Spain’s economy and its autonomous regions. Central planks of the project have been the creation of extensive databases on investment and capital stock, and an analysis of economic growth based on significantly enlarged statistical information. The principal aim of research work, in this case, has been to locate the Spanish economy in an international context over a fairly long time period, 1970-1997.