Regional economic integration and the evolution of disparities

This paper provides an overview of the evolution of interregional disparities in Europe and in the United States in recent decades, considering also the changes that economic integration over the 1990s and beyond may bring. The assumptions of the existing paradigms on differential regional change are placed in perspective, by relating them to past and ongoing changes in interregional disparities. Data on the European (EC) and United States cases are analyzed, providing insights into past performance and into its possible causes. A final section then discusses the characteristics of regional inversion processes, and their potential for reducing interregional disparities as economic integration advances. These macro-level characteristics are related to micro-level processes in which innovation (technological, organizational, institutional) plays a central role, allowing less developed regions to bypass a rigid or static domestic spatial division of labor through the inversion process.An earlier version of this paper was presented at the 4th World Congress of the RSAI, Palma de Mallorca, Spain, May 1992.