File(s) not publicly available
Catching up or falling behind: Economic performance and regional trajectories in an enlarged Europe
journal contribution
posted on 2023-06-07, 17:10 authored by Mick Dunford, Adrian SmithThis paper examines the trajectories of economic development of European national and regional economies in light of the pressures for greater integration and enlargement of the European Union. Using a variety of data sets, we demonstrate that there are significant variations in the speed and direction of change in per capita income and in productivity and employment rates across countries and a sample of European regions, and that falling behind (divergence) occurs as well as catching up (convergence). Making sense of spatial development therefore requires, we argue, that attention be paid to processes of differentiation and, in particular, to the falling behind experienced by less developed areas in East Central Europe and the forging ahead of the most developed, as well as to processes of catch-up. The paper also contributes to an assessment of the appropriateness of interpretations of growth and spatial development through countering the dominant discourse of convergence in neoclassical and neoliberal formulations and by suggesting that integration brings with it a number of important territorial ¿costs¿ associated with increasing inequality.
History
Publication status
- Published
Journal
Economic GeographyISSN
1468-2702Publisher
Economic GeographyIssue
2Volume
76Page range
169-195ISBN
0013-0095Department affiliated with
- Geography Publications
Full text available
- No
Peer reviewed?
- Yes
Legacy Posted Date
2012-02-06Usage metrics
Categories
No categories selectedKeywords
Licence
Exports
RefWorks
BibTeX
Ref. manager
Endnote
DataCite
NLM
DC