Path dependence and regional disparities in single-industry towns in Russia: the evidence from micro data

Abstract

This article aims to contribute to the debate on path dependence and lock-in mechanism at the micro data in single-industry towns, which in turn is highly concentrated in three regions - Kemerovo, Sverdlovsk and Chelyabinsk in Russia. The empirical context is five-year panel data on 38 single-industry towns. We offer the alternative micro data to evaluate entropy, the number of newly created enterprises, social payments and cash incomes, and aggregated revenues of the single-industry towns. Testing the U-shaped dependence, we conclude that the relation between diversification and incomes per capita coordinates with U-shape relevance at comparative low-level income. The argument follows from the nonlinear model between them. The regression models identify both traditional factors of urban development and micro data. The authors link the further development of single-industry towns in these regions with path creation and new linkage development.