Regional Disparities and their Reasons. Comparative Analysis of Slovakia and Hungary

Abstract

Paper is focused on regional disparities and structural changes of economies of the V4 countries: the Slovak Republic and Hungary. The results have shown increasing regional differences between the capital regions, including their adjacent areas and the rest of the countries in case of both countries, based on empirical data and documented by the Lorenz curve. We can also observe an increasing difference between Western and Eastern areas of both countries. In terms of structural changes in the economy during the analyzed period 2001-2009, we can see a substantial shift in employment from primary sector (agriculture etc.) mainly to tertiary sector (services etc.) and also to secondary sector (industry etc.). The results are based on empirical data from secondary sources.