Can the Growth Rate of Regional Disparities Be Halted? – Contributions to the Rethinking of Hungary’s Regional Policy

Abstract

Regional disparities have increased in Hungary over the course of the last two decades, despite the declared intentions of the government as well as domestic and foreign capital injections. Even our EU membership has not brought a substantial change in this respect. A social and economic divergence began instead of convergence between the centre and periphery; the resulting dif-ferences have become salient. That raises the question: can this process be halted, is there any chance for the lagging and depressed regions to undergo a real convergence? The answer is clear; it is hardly possible without the evolution of regional policy. Namely, it is increasingly difficult to create a macroeconomic equilibrium while such a large regional disequilibrium exists. The fiscal prac-tice of the past eight years should be broken away from, and an integrative and complex regional policy (aiming at creating indi-vidual equilibrium paths for the regions) is necessary instead of a virtual one.