Spatial Patterns of Regional Inequalities: Empirical Evidence from a Large Panel of Countries

This paper investigates regional inequality from two standpoints. First, it explores them from a global perspective by assessing the incidence of economic growth for 2867 regions from 161 countries. Results show that middle income regions had the highest growth rates after the Great Recession, whilst regions from deciles 9 and, to a lower extent, those from decile 10 had suffered the most negative impact. Hence, the incidence of regional growth resembles the ``elephant curve'' of global inter-personal inequality. Second, the paper explores within-country regional inequality for a panel of 25 countries, over the period 2000\textendash2018. Using OECD data and following both cross-sectional and time series approaches, results show that, while regional inequality decreases with growing GDPPC, regional polarization is more persistent and does not necessarily follow the same rule. The paper also delivers a first systematic assessment of sigma-convergence and regional polarization for a considerable number of countries, with findings pinpointing the importance of spatial clustering (which is contributing considerably to regional inequality levels), but also its complementarity with sigma-convergence measures (as regional inequality trajectories are not necessary associated with spatial clustering trajectories). Overall, findings also suggest that convergence approaches cannot provide an adequate theoretical background for understanding regional problems as long as they remain aspatial. \textcopyright 2022 Elsevier Ltd