Winning and Losing Regional Dynamics in the European Union during the Economic Globalization

Abstract

The new geo-economic context arising from the economic globalization induced significant changes vis a vis the previous era. It is therefore useful to try to understand how the EU regions’ socioeconomic dynamics has evolved. Since globalization may be seen as producing uneaven development between regions, in this study we identify the NUTS 2 regions that gained the most and that lost the most, in absolute and relative terms, drawing on an index that combines 11 variables. The results support the idea that the economic integration resulting from globalization seems to benefit the central regions of each country, generating dynamics that in the EU helped some strong economic regions to win and others – mainly with week economies – to loose.