The regional unevenness of economic development in Ukraine and the EU: models of analysis

Abstract

Nowadays countries and regions are under socioeconomic threats of different origin. One of the most crucial ones is notable regional unevenness of development, which leads to aggravation of social tension in society, a decline in the level of social security. Threats of this kind are not only inherent in individual member countries but interregional associations as well, such as the European Union. This leads to a reluctance of donor countries to spend an increasingly greater share of their income on supporting the acceptor countries' development. The regional unevenness problem has been studied by many scientists. However, the structure of unevenness has not been researched fully enough. Economic and mathematical models have been constructed to analyze the economic development regional unevenness. Macroeconomic and mesoeconomic systems have been researched. The macrolevel is presented by the European Union (EU) and its member countries. The mesolevel is presented by Ukraine and its regions. Gross domestic product per capita (for the EU) and gross regional product per capita (for Ukraine) have been selected as key indicators of the unevenness development. The proposed models are based on the cumulative growth theory assumptions and variance analysis methods. The models make it possible to position separate territories within the system of coordinates "development level – unevenness level"; select the centers of economic growth, problem regions and groups of regions with homogeneous nature of changes in the economic development; carry out a comparative analysis of the unevenness trends at the macro- and mesolevels.