Growing Differently: A Structural Classification for European NUTS-3 Regions

Jan Schulz Jan Weber

Working Paper Series, Department of Economics, University of Utah from University of Utah, Department of Economics

Abstract: We document two novel stylized facts on European integration and cohesion. First, we show that the interregional income distribution, measured as GDP per capita at the NUTS-3 level, is bimodal for all considered years. Second, we demonstrate that this mixture of two log-normal distributions provides an excellent fit for this interregional distribution in all considered years. We put forward two meso-level interpretations of these stylized facts, based on heterodox growth theory: The log-normality of the individual clusters hints at a stochastically multiplicative process, where growth is strongly path-dependent. This can be derived from maximum entropy considerations. However, the bimodality in the income distributions also implies two separate growth mechanisms. We show that the high-variance log-normal distribution governs the dynamics at both tails of the income distribution, which might be interpreted as the core and periphery and the low-variance variant the bulk of the distribution, thus interpretable as a semi-periphery.

Keywords: Inequality; Europe; Maximum Entropy; Geometric Brownian Motion; Core; Periphery; Resilience JEL Classification: C46, D63, F15, F43, C14, C63 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 28
Date: 2022
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-geo, nep-gro, nep-hme, nep-pke and nep-tid
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://economics.utah.edu/research/publications/2022-01.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:uta:papers:2022_01

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Paper Series, Department of Economics, University of Utah from University of Utah, Department of Economics Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().