Regional economic growth disparities in Ukraine: Input-output analysis approach

Abstract

Regional inequalities in economic growth had been observed within many countries and regions. This research emphasizes convergence/divergence technique for Ukrainian regions. As concepts of β- and s-convergence obtained from cross-country growth models has been subjected to a number of criticisms and they do not embrace applied significance in studying regional inequalities in Ukraine, we have built improved technique of investigating disparities across Ukrainian regions. The method is based on the analysis of regional input-output tables and its aggregation. Adopted technique provides weighted aggregation (by prices) of regional input-output tables that allows analyzing the structure of total for each region across sectors (or kinds of economic activity). We showed that implementation of aggregated regional input-output tables in analysis of regional convergence and the usage of equilibrium (weighted) prices have many advantages. The main finding is that among regions of Ukraine there are reduction of disparities in structures of different kinds of economic activities.