Disparities in Regional Economic Development in Romania

Abstract

The issue of economic disparities within the European Union economies is not new, it is actually a topical issue. Unfortunately, the EU enlargement has determined an even stronger deepening of the regional disparities, because in the absence of adequate regional development policies, the financial instruments have proved to be ineffective. Recent studies show that the economic crisis has increased regional disparities in the European Union countries, influencing the most important regions, especially the economically less advanced ones, the significant regional differences being identified at the NUTS 3 level. Based on these issues, the present paper tries to answer the following questions: 1. How extended are the regional disparities in Romania and how did they evolve over the period 1998-2012? 2. How did the economic crisis influence disparities? Which territorial units were more affected? In order to measure regional inequalities the Hoover index was used as well as the coefficient of variation, and the indicator for assessing the level of development as well as for highlighting regional disparities was GDP per capita. The analysis and interpretation of the results provide an overview of the situation at the regional level in Romania

An Approach to Design a Composite Index of Economic Development and Identifying the Bounds of its Levels

“…But we consider, when initial indicators Xj are measured by the absolute scale it is expedient to use additive convolution like formula (4). If initial indicators are relative measures of dynamic, we propose to use multiplicative convolution like formula (5). In that case, when among the selected indicators there are both absolute and relative, it is proposed to use block convolution according to the formula:…”

“…The key to making informed managerial decisions is economic information. The main indicator for identifying the individual countries development level as a whole and the comparing different countries by the economic development level traditionally considers GDP, which is as a universal measure of development and welfare [5,6]. For interregional comparisons within one country such indicator is GRP.…”

“…Let's also take into account the fact that the indicator X4 is a disincentive, and the rest of the indicators are incentives. We calculate the partial composite index for the first five indicators by the formula like (4) and for the last three -by the formula like(5).…”

Regional well-being in Romania: assessment after a decade of EU accession

“…A limited number of studies analyze the level and evolution of socioeconomic indicators at the regional level. Several articles study the development and convergence process level using GDP per capita (Otil et al. , 2015; Goschin, 2017), respectively, and the convergence process of wage (Zaman and Goschin, 2014).…”

“…A limited number of studies analyze the level and evolution of socioeconomic indicators at the regional level. Several articles study the development and convergence process level using GDP per capita (Otil et al, 2015;Goschin, 2017), respectively, and the convergence process of wage (Zaman and Goschin, 2014). Goschin (2015) proposes a synthetic index constructed from GDP, labor productivity and life expectancy, and found that inter-county disparities steadily expanded during the period 1995-2012.…”