Applying conclusions of the new economic geography for supporting elaboration of the spatial development strategies in the Baltic Sea Region

Abstract

Spatial development policies are frequently elaborated without sufficient economics concern. This paper aims at testing possibilities opened by concepts of the “new economic geography” to verify assumptions of decision makers from the Baltic Sea Region (BSR) countries on the negative impacts of the still existing transport barriers on regional (i.e. Baltic) integration and cohesion. For that purpose the analysis of relative concentration of the employment in regional and sector disaggregation. has been used. The research has shown how great the difficulties, piling up before an economist willing to examine issues of spatial development in the setting of pan-European regions are. Therefore it was hardly possible to reject the hypotheses on positive influence of development of transport infrastructure on regional integration and cohesion in the BSR.absolute concentration, entropy indices of concentration, Gini coefficients of concentration, new economic geography, relative concentration