Regional Structural Inequalities

Abstract

In this paper the main aspects of structural researches in the regional studies and spatial analyses are presented. The article offers a concise summary of measuring structural change and lays emphasis on the strengths and weaknesses of the vector-based methodology first used by V. V. Kossov. We argue that this method can be widely used to measure regional structural inequalities within a country as well as in the world. Three important factors have been analysed which affect economic structural inequality among European regions: the homogenous geographical endowments, the inequality-raising economical transformation process and the modifiable areal unit problem. Based on an empirical study of regional inequalities of 52 countries in the world we show that the inverted U-curve pattern of the Williamson-Kuznets hypothesis can also be observed between the level of the development and the regional inequalities of economic structures measured by the sectoral GVA.