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Spatial patterns of regional inequalities: Empirical evidence from a large panel of countries

DOI:10.1016/j.apgeog.2022.102638
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Mihail Eva
Mihail Eva
Mihail Eva
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Alexandra Cehan at Universitatea Alexandru Ioan Cuza
Alexandra Cehan
Ema Corodescu-Roșca at Universitatea Alexandru Ioan Cuza
Ema Corodescu-Roșca
Sebastien Bourdin at EM Normandie Business School
Sebastien Bourdin
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Abstract

This paper investigates regional inequality from two standpoints. First, it explores them from a global perspective by assessing the incidence of economic growth for 2867 regions from 161 countries. Results show that middle income regions had the highest growth rates after the Great Recession, whilst regions from deciles 9 and, to a lower extent, those from decile 10 had suffered the most negative impact. Hence, the incidence of regional growth resembles the “elephant curve” of global inter-personal inequality. Second, the paper explores within-country regional inequality for a panel of 25 countries, over the period 2000–2018. Using OECD data and following both cross-sectional and time series approaches, results show that, while regional inequality decreases with growing GDPPC, regional polarization is more persistent and does not necessarily follow the same rule. The paper also delivers a first systematic assessment of sigma-convergence and regional polarization for a considerable number of countries, with findings pinpointing the importance of spatial clustering (which is contributing considerably to regional inequality levels), but also its complementarity with sigma-convergence measures (as regional inequality trajectories are not necessary associated with spatial clustering trajectories). Overall, findings also suggest that convergence approaches cannot provide an adequate theoretical background for understanding regional problems as long as they remain aspatial.
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Applied Geography 140 (2022) 102638
0143-6228/© 2022 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Spatial patterns of regional inequalities: Empirical evidence from a large
panel of countries
Mihail Eva
a
,
*
, Alexandra Cehan
b
, Ema Corodescu-Roșca
a
, S´
ebastien Bourdin
c
a
“Alexandru Ioan Cuza” University of Iasi, Faculty of Geography and Geology, Department of Geography, Iasi, Romania
b
“Alexandru Ioan Cuza” University of Iasi, The Institute of Interdisciplinary Research, Department of Social Sciences and Humanities, Iasi, Romania
c
EM Normandie Business School, M´
etis Lab, France
ARTICLE INFO
Keywords:
Regional convergence
Geographical polarization
Spatial auto-correlation
Spatial Gini
Global inequality
Spatial disparity
ABSTRACT
This paper investigates regional inequality from two standpoints. First, it explores them from a global perspective
by assessing the incidence of economic growth for 2867 regions from 161 countries. Results show that middle
income regions had the highest growth rates after the Great Recession, whilst regions from deciles 9 and, to a
lower extent, those from decile 10 had suffered the most negative impact. Hence, the incidence of regional
growth resembles the “elephant curve” of global inter-personal inequality. Second, the paper explores within-
country regional inequality for a panel of 25 countries, over the period 2000–2018. Using OECD data and
following both cross-sectional and time series approaches, results show that, while regional inequality decreases
with growing GDPPC, regional polarization is more persistent and does not necessarily follow the same rule. The
paper also delivers a rst systematic assessment of sigma-convergence and regional polarization for a consid-
erable number of countries, with ndings pinpointing the importance of spatial clustering (which is contributing
considerably to regional inequality levels), but also its complementarity with sigma-convergence measures (as
regional inequality trajectories are not necessary associated with spatial clustering trajectories). Overall, ndings
also suggest that convergence approaches cannot provide an adequate theoretical background for understanding
regional problems as long as they remain aspatial.
1. Introduction
“Entrenched and persistent spatial disparities” (Pike, Rodrí-
guez-Pose, Tomaney, Torrisi, & Tselios, 2012) are hard to ignore. They
have marked both economic geography thinking and history of coun-
tries and economic unions around the world. Researchers showed that
high disparities and structural differences can result in extremely
different regional reactions to external economic shocks (Cuadrado-R-
oura, Martin, & Rodríguez-Pose, 2016), that could further undermine
the existence of monetary unions. Others, including Stiglitz (2015),
brought ethical and economic arguments in favor of a more equitable
world, that should aim at providing the same opportunities for people
irrespective of where they are born. Another group of researchers found
considerable evidence concerning the role of regional inequality in
fueling political instability and armed conicts (Ezcurra, 2019; Less-
mann, 2015; Østby, Nordås, & Rød, 2009). Moreover, and more
recently, spatial disparities received increased interest due to their
presumed role in explaining the emergence of the “places that don’t
matter” in the post-Trump and post-Brexit era, which culminated with
their revenge in the form of voting populist candidates (Rodríguez-Pose,
2018). Divergent regional economic trajectories over the long-term are
thus pinpointed to have an ascendant on the election results (Rodrí-
guez-Pose, 2020), leading to the emergence of a “geography of discon-
tent” (Dijkstra, Poelman, & Rodríguez-Pose, 2019; Los, McCann,
Springford, & Thissen, 2017).
On the other hand, convergence approaches have shown that (ab-
solute or conditional) convergence is happening at a speed of roughly
2% per year, both between countries and between regions of the same
country (Gennaioli, La Porta, De Silanes, & Shleifer, 2014; Sala-i-Martin,
1996b, 1996a), further suggesting that there is no reason for govern-
ments to particularly be concerned about regional economic inequality
on the long run. However, convergence approaches have been criticized
* Corresponding author. Carol I Boulevard, no. 20A, Iași, 700506, Romania.
E-mail address: mihail.eva@uaic.ro (M. Eva).
Contents lists available at ScienceDirect
Applied Geography
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/apgeog
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.apgeog.2022.102638
Received 1 August 2020; Received in revised form 17 August 2021; Accepted 11 January 2022
Free access for the full paper until 27th of March 2022 at the following link:
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0143622822000091?dgcid=coauthor
Permanent link:
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.apgeog.2022.102638
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