Exploratory spatial data analysis of the distribution of regional per capita GDP in Europe, 1980−1995

The aim of this paper is to study the space-time dynamics of European regional per capita GDP. A sample of 138 European regions over the 1980–1995 period provides clear evidence of global and local spatial autocorrelation as well as spatial heterogeneity in the distribution of regional per capita GDP. The detection of spatial clusters of high and low per capita GDP throughout the period is an indication of the persistence of spatial disparities among European regions. The dynamism of European regions is investigated by exploring the spatial pattern of regional growth. Implications for applied econometric work on the convergence of European regions are then suggested. Received: 11 September 2000 / Accepted: 11 March 2002 RID="*" ID="*"Previous versions of this article were presented at the 6th RSAI World Congress 2000 “Regional Science in a Small World”, Lugano, Switzerland, May 16–20, 2000 and the 40th ERSA Congress “European Monetary Union and Regional Policy”, Barcelona, Spain, August 29 – September 1, 2000. We would like to thank L. Anselin, R.J.G.M. Florax, A. Getis, C. Baumont, an and suggestions. We would also like to thank Eurostat: G. Decand and A. Behrens from the regional statistics section (division E4) as well as J. Recktenwald and I. Dennis for the help they provided on the Eurostat-Regio database. The usual disclaimer applies.     

European cities in the process of economic integration: towards structural convergence

The process of economic integration has triggered complex territorial dynamics in Europe. Basically, opposite dynamics appears to prevail for national and regional economies. The convergence process of the national economies of the EU coexists with a process of divergence between the regional European economies. The process of economic integration occurs in a context of increased importance of permanent innovation and of resulting increased territorialisation of activities where the metropolitan areas seem to embody the main issues at stake on European scene, particularly regarding its regional dimension. Different theoretical literatures have been developed, regarding both income convergence and regional specialisation in Europe. This paper is a first step towards a simultaneous resolution of the different dimensions of regional dynamics induced by the European integration: it focuses on the concept of structural convergence applied at the regional level and adopting the Wacziarg (2001) framework empirically establishes the existence of structural convergence of European metropolitan areas. An erratum to this article can be found at     

Regional productivity patterns in Europe: An alternative approach

This article aims to examine the differences in the behaviour of productivity across the European regions. First, we give an overview of regional convergence of productivity in the European Union. Significant regional differences emerge from the detailed analysis of the evolution of productivity that follows. We note that those differences can even be observed in relatively homogeneous regions (peripheral, central, old industrialised, etc.).  A new methodological approach is introduced with the aim of exploring in greater depth this diversity, especially in the evolution of labour productivity. A total of 97 regions from the European Union have been selected in order to verify some specific differences in productivity, employment and GVA growth rates. Despite the global trend towards convergence in productivity, this article reveals that significant regional differences persist. Finally, a regional typology is presented. Received: January 1999 / Accepted: August 1999     

Regional disparities and determinants of growth in Mexico

Developing countries such as Mexico, in which profound processes of economic liberalization have taken place over the last few decades, offer fertile terrain for studies of regional disparities. Mexico has experienced a history of polarization between regions, the industrialized north and the underdeveloped south, which have seen their differences widen, exacerbated through recurrent crises and liberalization processes. This paper looks at the convergence process among regions, examining which factors might affect regional growth, tracking the evolution of single units and identifying winners and losers. The evidence shows that northern states, bordering the USA, moved from a condition that might be described as `falling-behind' prior to liberalization to that of a `winner' after that process, while southern states went from the position of `catching-up' to that of `loser'. Regional disparities in human capital would appear to be playing a decisive role in the existence of differences. The author acknowledges comments from Gilles Duranton, Henry Overman, Andrés Rodríguez-Pose, two anonymous referees, and participants in seminars in The London School of Economics and the European University Institute.     

Convergence and transition auspice of Chinese regional growth

This paper reconsiders the question of regional convergence in China. Barros convergence model and Theils regional inequality index are applied in the study. Analytical results reject the absolute convergence hypothesis in the Chinese case, but suggest a conditional convergence pattern. As for China as one system, it is further discovered that there exists a complex phenomenon that the three regions, the east, the mid and the west, converge to different equilibria respectively. Therefore, the mid and the west break through the existing system structure to reach the high level like that of the east is a crucial task of Chinese economic development. A detailed inversed U-shape analysis leads to two important findings. First, it discovers that the regional disparities between the east region and the rest of China are widening, while the regional disparity between the mid and the west is shrinking. Second, the Chinese regional economy has reached the critical point of divergence-convergence transition in terms of stages of national economic development according to Williamsons theoretical model. This gives the state government some room for doing something to make the convergence happen at an early possible time.Received: July 2002/Accepted: January 2003     

Spatial disparities in the European Union: an analysis of regional polarization

This paper examines the degree of polarization in the European Union regional per capita income distribution between 1977 and 1999 from several complementary perspectives. Specifically, we have combined a non-parametric analysis with the information provided by various polarization measures proposed by the literature on personal income distribution. The results reveal that the European regions tend to cluster into different per capita income classes during the study period. Nevertheless, the level of intra-distribution mobility is relatively low, especially in regions at the upper and lower ends of the distribution. In any event, regional polarization has decreased over time, as a consequence of various factors sometimes working in opposite directions. Additionally, the empirical evidence provided reveals that the geographical location of the various regions and the differences in their productivity levels, play a major role in explaining the polarization patterns observed in the European Union.     

Regional disparities in the European Union and the enlargement process: an exploratory spatial data analysis, 1995–2000

The aim of this paper is to study the space–time dynamics of European regional per capita gross domestic product (GDP) in the perspective of the enlargement of the European Union using exploratory spatial data analysis. We find strong evidence of global and local spatial autocorrelation as well as spatial heterogeneity in the distribution of regional per capita GDP in a sample of 258 European regions including regions from acceding and candidate European countries over the period 1995–2000. However, contrary to previous results obtained in the literature highlighting a North–South polarization scheme, the enlargement process leads to a new North–West–East polarization scheme. The economic dynamism of EU15 regions and acceding or candidate regions is also investigated by exploring the spatial pattern of regional growth. Implications for regional development and cohesion policies are finally suggested.     

ECONOMIC DISPARITY UNDER CONDITIONS OF INTEGRATION — A LONG TERM VIEW OF THE EUROPEAN CASE

ABSTRACT This paper examines the development of disparities between the regions of the European Union over a very long period of time. It does so by reviewing the relevant theoretical, empirical and prospective literature. First, the contributions of the; different schools of thought on regional growth are reviewed. They are inconclusive as to the outcome of the process in terms of convergence or divergence. Next, empirical studies into the differential development of European regions are reviewed, covering the whole period of the industrial revolution to our present time. The resulting picture reveals a considerable diversity of patterns. Over the postwar period, characterized by increased economic integration, a decrease in disparity has been recorded. Poorer regions have used their improved access to the European market and their better opportunities for attracting mobile capital to each up the likely behavior of the regional system of Europe are examined. In the future, new forms of economic integration (deepening like the EMU, and widening with the central European countries) will to a large extent shape the environment for regional developments. All in all, these factors are likely to bring more disparity. Therefore, increased attention should be given to policies that stimulate new ways of mobilizing the diverse potential of the various regions of the enlarged Europe.     

Demand for information and communication technology-based services and regional economic development

The relationship between the uptake of Information and Communication Technology-based services (ICT) and regional economic development is examined here; we address in particular the idea that ICT will promote regional economic convergence. We argue that ICT can generate contradictory trends of regional convergence and divergence and that, under conditions of non-regulated market supply, the effects leading to divergence can be dominant. The approach is based on the development of a regional demand model, which is the combination of two sub models, one dealing with the effects of network externalities and the other based on the concept of potential demand for ICT. The main conclusion is that less populous, more peripheral and poorer regions with weaker existing social and economic networking will encounter problems of insufficient demand. This in turn will delay the launch of new services and slow the rate of uptake. Negative dynamic effects of low ICT use on economic performance will generate a vicious circle of cumulative disadvantage. Received: 2 October 2000 / Accepted: 6 December 2001 RID="*" ID="*" Thanks are due to Miguel Jardim and Jo?o Marques for technical assistance with the graphics.     

Regional economic dynamics and convergence in the European Union

This paper uses an alternative approach to convergence analysis, which, in our opinion, is richer than those traditionally proposed. We believe that the evolution of the whole regional distribution is what matters, not that of an average or representative economy, implicit in the or convergence concepts. Moreover, when analyzing inequality among regional economies, geographic space acquires a preeminent role. We therefore apply spatial association tests recently developed in the spatial econometrics literature and relate them to convergence analysis. Specifically, we apply this methodology to the analysis of regional dynamics and convergence in the European Union (EU). In this context, the progress made in the integration process has highlighted the question of economic disparities at regional level. The process of convergence came to an end in the late seventies, coinciding with major changes in economic activity. This paper shows how these factors appear to have provoked a regionally differentiated response which, though significant, did not, in all likelihood, exacerbate the decrease in regional inequalities.     

Income dynamics in an enlarged Europe: the role of capital regions

This article is aimed to study, by means of both a nonparametric and a parametric approach to convergence, whether after the recent enlargements of the European Union the traditional twofold spatial regime of regional per capita income growth, envisaging a north/south and/or a cohesion/non-cohesion countries divide, should be replaced by an alternative east/west spatial pattern. A second relevant issue is whether new member regions where capital cities are located are benefiting from the same “network effect” that stimulated growth in old member capital regions during the 1980s and early 1990s. We find evidence, by means of spatial econometrics tools, of significant spatial effects in the enlarged Europe which seems to be formed by a group of old member regions, slowly becoming more homogeneous, and a newcomers group which represents a separate “convergence club” but whose capital regions are rapidly integrating into the west. The European regional policy may play a crucial role in this context.     

REGIONAL CONVERGENCE IN THE EUROPEAN MONETARY UNION

ABSTRACT This paper analyzes the effects of European Monetary Union (EMU) on regional convergence. First information is provided about the magnitude and the evolution of regional disparities. Subsequently, the relation between economic integration and long run regional convergence is discussed. Third, regional convergence is shown to be dependent on flexible regional adjustment to changing economic conditions. In the transition to and in the final stage of EMU sufficient regional wage flexibility will be requires to cope with adverse economic shocks. The last part of the paper estimates the reponse or regional labor income to region-shape and national shocks.     

Applying social network analysis in economic geography: framing some key analytic issues

Social network analysis attracts increasing attention in economic geography. We claim social network analysis is a promising tool for empirically investigating the structure and evolution of inter-organizational interaction and knowledge flows within and across regions. However, the potential of the application of network methodology to regional issues is far from exhausted. The aim of our paper is twofold. The first objective is to shed light on the untapped potential of social network analysis techniques in economic geography: we set out some theoretical challenges concerning the static and dynamic analysis of networks in geography. Basically, we claim that network analysis has a huge potential to enrich the literature on clusters, regional innovation systems and knowledge spillovers. The second objective is to describe how these challenges can be met through the application of network analysis techniques, using primary (survey) and secondary (patent) data. We argue that the choice between these two types of data has strong implications for the type of research questions that can be dealt with in economic geography, such as the feasibility of dynamic network analysis.     

Distribution of regional income and regional funds in Europe 1989–1999: An exploratory spatial data analysis

The efforts of the European Commission to reduce regional inequalities over its territory continue to attract the attention of researchers. The purpose of this paper is to perform an exploratory investigation of the relationship between the spatial distribution of regional income and of regional development funds among 145 European regions over 1989–1999. Using a set of tools of spatial statistics, we first detect the presence of global and local spatial autocorrelation in the distribution of regional per capita incomes, traducing that rich (poor) regions tend to be clustered close to other rich (poor) regions, and in the distribution of regional growth rate and regional funds. Second, the results of LISA statistics conclude to the presence of spatial heterogeneity in the form of two spatial clusters of rich and poor regions over the decade, highlighting the persistence of a significant core-periphery pattern among European regions. Finally, an exploratory analysis reveals a negative correlation between growth and initial income, that tends to indicate -convergence. A positive relationship between regional growth and structural funds is identified among the significant results as well. Only Andalucia, Galicia and Sterea Ellada show atypical linkages. These results suggest that further research should include spatial effects and the distribution of regional funds in the spatial econometric estimation of regional convergence in Europe.Received: March 2003/Accepted: November 2003This paper has been written while I was a Fulbright Visiting-Researcher at the Regional Economics Applications Laboratory, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (USA). I have benefited from useful comments of the participants of the 49^th Annual North American Meeting of the RSAI and the participants of the 42^nd Annual Meeting of the WRSA. I would like to thank most especially Julie Le Gallo, Phil Rees and two anonymous referees for their valuable suggestions. Financial support from the Région Aquitaine (France) is gratefully acknowledged.     

EU regional unemployment as a transnational matter: An analysis via the Gompertz diffusion processs

At the end of 1990s, Danny Quah devoted several papers to the analysis of polarization and stratification in the convergence processes of economies, creating the image of the ‘convergence clubs’ and suggesting the importance of studying the distribution dynamics of the macroeconomic variables. As for the labour markets, Overman and Puga (2002) showed that a progressive polarization of unemployment was in fact occurring among the European regions in 1986–1996, causing a phenomenon of cross‐border clusterization. Here we propose to analyse the evolution of the unemployment rates of the EU 27 regions in the last two decades assuming that the unemployment rates evolve according to a Gompertz stochastic process. The estimated parameters of the process – intrinsic growth rate, deceleration factor, volatility – represent the evolutionary path of the unemployment rate and allow for estimating the steady state of the process. A cluster analysis is performed on the steady state values of the unemployment rates. The analysis confirms the emergence of several ‘convergence clubs’ among the European regional labour markets, which are compared to the clusters resulting from the more traditional clusterization on the current unemployment rates.     

Long-run regional population disparities in Europe during modern economic growth: a case study of Spain

The objective of the present study is to analyze the disparities in long-run regional population growth in continental Europe. To this end, we propose a convergence equation for regional population distribution for eight Western European countries in the period 1850–2000. Our results show that divergence in economic growth at regional level has been a common pattern in Europe. We choose the case of Spain in order to depict the characteristics of this process of regional demographic divergence, studying the spatial dynamic of the Spanish population, focusing firstly on the processes of concentration–dispersion on a general scale. Finally, we establish a regional typology of long-term Spanish population growth, based on cluster analysis.     

Long-run effects of regional policy in an economic union

Regional policy in economic unions (e.g. in the European Union) is usually conducted with the objective of overcoming regional disparities. By developing a two-regional growth model with endogenous technological change, we address the long-term implications of regional policy measures. We show that regional policies aiming to support the less-developed region do not only change the location of production between the regions but also affect the overall growth performance of the union. By altering the incentive to accumulate knowledge capital, regional policies influence the steady-state growth rate. Our analysis shows that a potential trade-off between regional equity and dynamic efficiency exists.     

Behind the Eastern–Western European convergence path: the role of geography and trade liberalization

This paper proposes a 2-block 3-region economic geography model that can account for the most salient stylized facts experienced by Eastern European transition economies during the period 1990–2005. In contrast to the existing literature, which has favored technological explanations, trade liberalization is the only driving force. The model correctly predicts that in the first half of the period, trade liberalization led to divergence in GDP per capita, both between the West and the East and within the East. Consistent with the data, in the second half of the period, this process was reversed and convergence became the dominant force.     

The impact of convergence in the industrial mix on regional comparative growth: Empirical evidence from the French case

The aim of this article is to explain heterogeneities in French regional labor productivities since the mid-seventies at both aggregate and sectoral level. This paper extends the works of Baumol and of Barro and Salai-Martin, firstly by pointing out sources of growth linked to the new growth theories (research effort, size effects) and secondly by emphasizing the impact of cross-sectoral labor reallocations through a shift-share analysis. Our results show the importance of regional asymmetries and the key role played by the dynamic of sectoral composition in the convergence of labor productivities within France.Received: November 2000/Accepted: February 2004     

Spatial dominance: a new approach to the estimation of interconnectedness in regional input-output tables

In the first, theoretical part, the paper gives an overview of possible measures of the impact of loops and feedbacks in an input-output structure. In the second part, the paper provides indicators that measure interregional connectedness. Applying the influence graphs theory, a distinction is proposed between partial interconnectedness (between two or three regions, sectors, ...) and global interconnectedness (between all regions, sectors, regional sectors ...). Lastly, this approach is illustrated by a comparison of two French tables (1982 and 1992), computed by a simple method of biproportion, and consisting of 6 large regions and 6 large sectors.Received: December 2000 / Accepted: May 2003