THE REGIONAL DEVELOPMENT OF POLAND IN 2005–2013 – THE MAIN TENDENCIES

Abstract

The regional development of Poland is presented from a different point of view. One is connected with the GDP growth paths, characterizing each of the regions of Poland and their differentiation. Another deals with the gap of per capita GDP between regions and characteristic features of the regional development, especially if one can observe the convergence or divergence processes. According to the theory that GDP is not only one category sufficient to represent regional development, some selected variables are examined from the convergent point of view. The new method of convergence analysis is presented in this paper. The method is based on the information theory and entropy. The distributions by regions of selected variables representing the different socio-economic phenomena are compared with the distribution of basic variables, treated as a pattern, and the proposed similarity measures are estimated. The analysis of the changes in the similarity measures over time is the basis of concluding whether the convergence of regional development has been observed. The proposed method gives us more useful results, as it takes into account many aspects of socio-economic sphere. The empirical analysis for Poland contains the period of 2005–2013. The trend models for regional per capita GDP were estimated, also for similarity measures of the selected variables. The conclusions based on the results of empirical analysis are the final part of this article.