ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL DISPARITY DEVELOPMENT WITHIN REGIONAL DEVELOPMENT OF THE SLOVAK REPUBLIC

Abstract

Regional development issues play an important role in the policy agenda of the EU countries, including Slovakia. The persistence of regional disparities impedes the ability of a country to promote economic growth and social cohesion, while regional development can be considered as a key determinant of economic development and living-standard improvements. The purpose of the study is to employ different measures of regional disparity in order to empirically analyze the set of chosen socio-economic indicators that provide insights about the current situation in the individual Slovak regions. The study provides a discussion and the assessment of various measurement concepts of regional disparity such as the coefficient of variation, the territorial Gini coefficient, the population weighted coefficient of variation and the Theil index, and employs time-series analysis to assess statistical significance of observed tendencies. The study confirms the negative trends in terms of growing regional development disparities across Slovakia and discusses the determinants of regional disparities in The Slovak Republic, most notably foreign direct investment inflow, demographics and the flow of funds into research and development activities.

DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5755/j01.em.18.3.4203