Regional Convergence, Divergence and Other Aspects of Distributional Dynamics of European Regions in the Period 1992-2006

The paper provides an exploratory analysis of regional dynamics among 264 NUTS2 EU-27 regions over the period 1992-2006. Seven different regional indicators are analyzed including wages, household expenditures, retail sales, investments, productivity, GDP, and GDP adjusted for international purchasing power differences. Several aspects of regional dynamics are studied such as convergence, polarization, role of international component, overall mobility, and individual mobility of Czech regions. Different methods are employed including some traditional techniques such as Gini coefficient, Theil decomposition, or kernel density estimates but also more innovative measures based on the pair-wise comparisons of regions. The results suggest strong regional convergence in relative ratios hand in hand with increasing absolute gaps among European regions. The analysis also indicates a significant bipolarity in the investigated distributions and a major role of international component in the process of European regional development. From the Czech regions, only Praha and Střední Čechy recorded some upward mobility in the European regional rank distributions, while the relative positions of all other units deteriorated.