Abstract
The research aims to identify industrial and other economic sectors’ contribution to the regional divergence in Eastern European countries, particularly Poland and Ukraine. The ambiguity of the results of previous studies on the factors of regional convergence indicates the need for further research, considering the peculiarities of distinct economies’ development. The countries selected for analysis – Ukraine and Poland – had similar starting conditions for market transformation, have a common border, and a comparable population. The analysis of regional inequality in Ukraine revealed a tendency of asymmetric regions’ growth in 2010–2017. In Poland, divergent trends in regional development in 2009–2017 were significantly less pronounced. The statistical method to identify the impact of the industrial, agricultural, and service sectors on regional σ-convergence based on coefficients of variation measuring the differences in regional economies’ sectoral structure was used. The analysis demonstrated that, in general, the uneven structure of regional economies does not significantly impact any of the analyzed countries, which confirmed the results of some other studies. Simultaneously, it highlighted that the industrial sector had the greatest impact on regional divergence in Poland. Despite the dominant role of services in regional divergence in Ukraine, most researchers emphasize the importance of the industrial sector for regional development. To consider this factor in the regional divergence of Ukrainian regions, some regional policy implications were considered.
Highlights
Regional divergence is considered as one of the main issues national states face, hampering the economic development and causing their socio-economic vulnerability and fragility
Differentiation of the regions’ reproductive potential caused by the geographical, political, and socio-economic factors led to the domination of the “center-periphery” model of regional development in the transformational economies of Eastern Europe, including those of Poland and Ukraine
The problem of eliminating disparities is an important component of regional policy, so the analysis of regional divergence has not lost its relevance for over a century
Summary
Regional divergence is considered as one of the main issues national states face, hampering the economic development and causing their socio-economic vulnerability and fragility. Sabyasachi and Sakthivel (2006) studied the levdivergence; el of regional divergence in India and performed sectoral decomposition using coefficients of varia- Shevchenko (2017) who, based on the ratio of tion as indicators of divergence It appeared maximum and minimum indicators of sales of that divergence in industrial and services develindustrial products, detected the trend of reopment significantly contributed to the regional gional equalization in 2012–2016 in Ukraine; divergence. European countries has not lost relevance for These scientific studies reveal the role of subjective a long time Overcoming it is one of the main factors in the formation of divergent processes tasks of transformational economies, particular- and indicate the miscalculations of state regional ly those that are part of the EU or are its associ- policy or the absence of any reforms in the field of ate members.
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