Diana Cibulskiene (p), Mindaugas Butkus, Kristina Matuzeviciute, Alma Maciulyte-Sniukiene

Eleonora Cutrini

Considering a lack of convergence researches at NUTS 3 level in general and necessity to decompose EU regional disparities more precisely encompassing smaller than NUTS 2 level regions, this paper aims to fill the gap of the empirical researches on EU regional convergence issue by constructing 3-level Theil index which enabled us to decompose EU disparities into between countries (alternatively – between NUTS 1 regions), within country (alternatively – within NUTS 1 region) at NUTS 2 level and within NUTS 2 region at NUTS 3 level components covering the period of 1995 – 2014 using latest NUTS 2013 classification. The results of analysis revealed that disparities between NUTS 3 regions over the 20 years period decreased mainly due to diminishing between country variation, while within country disparities at NUTS 2 level and within NUTS 2 disparities at NUTS 3 level are increasing.

Eleonora Cutrini (p)

Diana Cibulskienė

The European debt crisis, with all its facets, disclosed the relevance of various asymmetries among countries in an incomplete and still fragile European Union. Growing disparities are among the most relevant challenges for the cohesion and stability of the European Union, together with the main political threats such as security, refugees, the mounting of Euroscepticism.
In a period characterized by a substantial structural change, defining appropriate economic policies for a stable recovery requires a deep understanding of the territorial organization of production and wealth across Europe. Uneven development is an outstanding characteristic of the European economic landscape and the long recession has significantly disrupted wealth and employment with different effects across regions and countries.
On this background, this paper aims to shed lights on the evolution of spatial inequalities after the common shock of the global financial crisis. The findings confirm that there is no overall convergence in per capita income; instead four clubs of regions can be identified on the basis of the clustering algorithm developed by Phillips and Sul (2007) for panel data analysis. The results from the ordered probit model confirms that initial structural characteristics and opposing dynamics in terms of industrialization and specialization in high-productivity services activities, can indeed explain the different club membership of regions. Different models of specialization and the increasing outsourcing going along with the European integration may also be at the root of such differences.
Policy interventions should be more sensitive to the different paths of recovery, deadlocks and structural transformation. A particular attention should be devoted to satisfy the training and educational requirements that are needed to sustain specific regional structural change.

Shinan Wang (p), Iryna Kristensen , Timothy Heleniak

Patricia C. Melo

see extended abstract

Patricia C. Melo (p), Conceição Rego

Patricia Melo/Conceição Rego

This study provides evidence on spatio-temporal patterns of socio-economic performance across small areas (freguesias) in Portugal between 1991 and 2011, and compares how well different types of regions (e.g. urban vs. rural, accessible vs. remote) have performed during that period.
The first part of the study provides a GIS-based spatial data analysis of change in key indicators of socio-economic performance between rural and urban areas. This initial exploratory analysis shows there is considerable heterogeneity in socio-economic performance between and within both urban and rural areas, and in particular between accessible and remote rural areas. A number of factors help explain this variability, including differences in sectoral composition, specialisation and other demographic and socio-economic factors. In addition, proximity to urban regions can also affect rural performance as a result of the various connections taking place spatially through labour and housing markets.
The second part of the study investigates the nature of the spillover effects between urban and rural regions in Portugal. We measure the effect of proximity to main urban centres as a driver of rural population growth, or decline, after controlling for other factors affecting population and employment growth. Our empirical approach follows that of Veneri and Ruiz (2013) for a cross section of small regions from 14 OECD countries, and accounts for economic structure and socio-economic factors, besides proximity to urban centres, on rural growth. The results generally suggest that proximity to urban regions has a positive impact on the growth of nearby rural areas, while the effect for more remote rural areas tends to be mixed. The importance of the spillover effect also differs according to the size of urban areas.
The study also makes a contribution by creating a new socio-economic dataset using small-scale geographies (freguesias), while the majority of previous studies focusing on Portugal use large aggregate spatial units at the level of NUTS2 or NUTS3, and to smaller extent LAU1 (i.e. municipalities).