Regional Inequalities and the Determination of Spatial Structure

This paper has two aims. Firstly, it provides a number of critical reflections of the existing methods of the examinations of intertemporal change of spatial differences of various socio-economic indicators, mainly the per capita income. Practically there are two types of analysis of spatial differences in income level, namely intercountry and intracountry investigations. The diverse growth rate of spatial income level of various spatial units (regions, countries, provinces, counties etc.) is a historical-statistical fact which refers to an unrepeatable, unique and particular historical situation. The descriptions of the convergence or divergence of various spatial units in various time periods contribute to our historical knowledge, but the "testing of convergence approach" has no theoretical basis. Secondly, the larger part of the paper illustrates many theoretical issues by the help of the Hungarian spatial income data between 1988 and 2004. The analysis has four spatia...

DETUROPE - The Central European Journal of Tourism and Regional Development

The first part of the article outlines the unique development path of Central and Eastern European countries after their market economic transition, and its changing geo-economic framework conditions referred to as "externally-driven capitalism" or "dependent market economy". The failure of regional policy to promote the settlement of new industries and sectors is explained by the fact that most regions in the countries under study belong to the most disadvantaged and lagging regions of the EU. The second part provides a brief summary of the articles included in the thematic issue that focus on the territorial disparities and economic processes of Hungary. The concluding section highlights the specific problems of peripheral regions that are lacking scale and visibility on the European level, stressing the need to construct their own nonmetropolitan and non-FDI-driven development model, and to embark on a sustainable/rural alternative development path, one that represents a different perspective of the economy and competitiveness and does not set irrealistic goals.

Wschodnioznawstwo

Trends in regional inequalities between 1910 and 1930 in Hungary and the successor states The present article is a summary of a 5-year research on historical peripheries of Hungary between 1910 and 2010. The identification of peripheral zones in Hungary in 1910 – which geographers failed to do up to now – contributed to the assessment of mistargeted regional development planning policies in the last hundred years. On the other hand it also caused debates, because many of the backward areas coincided with regions dominated by ethnic minorities, thus strengthening the opinion of the historians of the successor states that Austria-Hungary oppressed national minorities. The first part of the article summarizes the opinions, interpretations, misunderstandings emerging from this debate around mapping of inequalities and the implementation of geographical methods in historical research. The second part of the article goes further and – by drawing up the regional differences in 2010 – evalu...

2015

The examination of disadvantaged regions goes back to a long history, greatly influenced by the ever-changing natural, economic and human resources. Consequently, while examining the disadvantaged areas, we face new systems of coherences. Today’s regional policy also needs to answer the question whether the spatial development funds of the past have been efficient or not and whether the land use distribution influences the spatial competitiveness or not. As we move towards 2015, we must consider the actual state of delivery of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) in the Least Developed Countries (LDCs) and address the above-mentioned issues in order to realise the international political commitment to leave no one behind. In this paper, we have shown some aspects of spatial economic processes through the example of the Hungarian disadvantaged areas. These issues are timely because the usefulness of the research is important, ranging from rural development to spatial planning and ...

The basic assumption of the paper is that numerous similarities exist between the patterns of economic growth and territorial capital growth. The rush economic growth and rush growth of territorial capital are compared empirically at Hungarian micro-regional level from 2004 until 2010. After normalizing the dataset, a very novel spatial econometric method is applied, called a penalty for bottleneck. The results show that the constant rush growth of territorial capital is as harmful as economic recession. On the other hand, the decrease of infrastructural and social capital caused the rush growth of territorial capital in this period. Moreover, the key findings of two case studies suggest that the balanced growth of territorial capital will be created by the falling social inequalities and increasing infrastructural capital.

1979

In September 1977 a 'Regional Science Symposium' was held at the Faculty of Economics of the University of Groningen in the Netherlands. Organized because of the recent establishment at the Faculty of Economics of a group that is engaged in teaching and research in the field of regional science, the aim of the symposium was to make university members more familiar with regional science and to introduce the newlycreated group to the national and international scene. Two separate topics were selected, of potential interest to both researchers and policy-makers. The first, spatial inequalities and regional development, was chosen because of its central place in regional science. Authors from several disciplines were asked to approach this theme from a general, policyorientated point of view. This ensured the enlightenment of the various dimensions of spatial inequality and its implications for regional policy. The results have been collected in the volume Spatial Inequalities and Regional Development. The second theme focused on spatial statistical analysis. This branch of statistics is a relatively new one which receives growing attention among researchers in the field of applied regional science. The meeting on this topic concentrated on new results of research on the use of appropriate statistical and econometric methods for analyzing spatial data. The papers concerned have been collected into another volume, Exploratory and Explanatory Statistical Analysis of Spatial Data. Both volumes contain mainly papers presented at the symposium. Some additional papers have been included to improve the consistency of the volumes. All contributions have been revised before final publication. In this process critical remarks made by invited discussants at the symposium proved to be very helpful. We believe that these efforts have helped considerably to improve the quality of both volumes.

2004

DETUROPE - The Central European Journal of Tourism and Regional Development

In the years following the regime change of 1989-90, Hungary faced numerous economic and political challenges. Apart from the dominance of privatisation, the '90s can definitely be described as a decade of transition. The performance of the Hungarian economy had reached the pre-transition level by the turn of the millennium, while the labour market and the structure of economic sectors had undergone substantial changes. In the present paper, we investigate how stable the developed sectoral structure proved to be in the two decades that followed and what territorial specificities the changes were characterised by. Our main question is how further structural changes-besides the sectors' performance (productivity) growthcontributed to the changing economic performance of territorial units in the period of 2000-2019. In our study, we divide productivity change into a "between-sector" and a "within-sector" element. We regard the analysis as a relevant research question in general as well. However, the global financial crisis occurring at the "mid-term" of the studied period (2008) represents a special rupture. The analysis framework is provided by the counties (NUTS3 regions), we conduct our analysis in this context. It can be established that the primary factor of productivity growth is the increase of performance within sector groups and not the change in the economic structure of counties. The impact of structural changes is smaller in magnitude and may even have a negative value in several cases, i.e., the economic structure of counties has shifted from higher-productivity sectors towards those with lower productivity.

As a result of the political and economic transition, the Hungarian spatial pattern of taxable personal incomes restructured significantly. The position of north-eastern Hungary weakened, however, pronounced intraregional inequalities arose due to the uneven collapse of the local economies. The transition reflected the group of settlements categorised by the number of settlements. The detailed spatial income pattern of settlements and the internal and external effects influencing it were represented with the help of the potential model. The changes between 1988 and 2008 were measured by the difference of the summarized potential values. The map of differences illustrated the areas with relative advantages and disadvantages compared to the regional average value. Most of the largest towns were able to maintain or strengthen their positions giving advantage to the suburban settlements in their environs. However, the former peripheries, the mining and heavy industrial zones with a collapsed economic base, suffered the greatest relative loss over the last two decades because of the transition.

The aim of this study is to present the territorial capital endowment of the Hungarian microregions (LAU1 level) from 2004 till 2010 and to measure its annual change. After the normalization the figures are corrected with a very novel way calling method of penalty for bottleneck. Basically, the results prove the accumulation of territorial capital of the microregions is determined by relational-, economic- and cultural capital mutually. Generally, the Hungarian regional economic growth and development are significantly determined by the economic networking and regional endogenous assets as well.

2012

The examination of disadvantaged areas has a long history, which is greatly influenced by the continuous change of the natural, economic and human resources. Therefore, while investigating the disadvantaged regions, new and new coherences occur. Today’s regional policy needs to face the issue whether the past years’ regional funds have been efficient enough and whether the land-use of such areas influence the competitiveness of the given region. These issues are raised every day while examining the efficiency of the regional policy of the last 20 years. The topic is very actual, since there are inequalities existing in the world, and also in the member states of the European Union. There are significant imbalances between the urban and rural areas. The focus of our research was on the economic and social dimensions of the territorial imbalances in the micro-regions, with special focus on the complex relationships among them

2009

Economic planning in Hungary was directed from central agencies for most of the 2nd half of the 20th century, and existing public development policy – including regional development – is even now under the aegis of centralised interests that consider the unitary state as the normative form of governance. However, spatial planning has existed for a long time as an undercurrent of planning culture, and could, at its most successful, become a corrective instrument for the largely unipolar development models and serve as a transmission mechanism for the articulation of sub-national interests. In this paper, on the basis of secondary sources, planning documents, archives research and interviews with retired planners, I explore the issue of decentralisation in Hungarian spatial planning during state socialism and the present period.