The Contribution of Regions to Aggregate Growth in the OECD

This article investigates the contribution of regions to aggregate growth. We find a great degree of heterogeneity in the performance of Territorial Level 3 ( TL3) regions of the OECD (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development). The regional contributions to aggregate growth follow a power law, with a coefficient around 1.2 (in absolute terms). This implies that Few-Large ( FL) regions contribute disproportionately to aggregate growth whereas Many-Small ( MS) individual regions contribute only marginally. Because the large number of these smaller regions and the decay of their contribution to growth is slow (generating a fat tail distribution), their cumulated contribution is actually around two-thirds of aggregate growth.