Convergence/Divergence Analysis And Differentiation In Macroeconomic Variables In The Development Of The Russian Federation

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the economic development and the diversification of the individual regions of the Russian Federation (RF) on the basis of taxonomic indices and a convergence/divergence analysis of five macroeconomic variables, namely registered unemployment rate, investment per capita, gross domestic product (GDP) per capita, wages, and the number of organizations conducting research and development (R&D) per million inhabitants, for the period between 2000 and 2012 (the period was chosen due to lack of data for years 2014, 2015 and 2016 for few regions). The study covers 79 regions, and the data used for the analyses comes from the Russian Statistical. The principal method of analysis is the taxonomic index based on Euclidean metrics. The spatial differentiation in the development of RF regions demonstrates the specific character of the individual regions of Russia. The analysis made leads to the conclusion that the most developed regions in terms of the analyzed variables are of industrial and mining character, while the least developed ones are agricultural in character. The structure of this paper is as follows: the spatial differentiation of macroeconomic variables in RF regions, registered unemployment rate, per capita investment, per capita GDP, wages, and number of organizations conducting R&D activities per million inhabitants is discussed in section 2; the definition of a taxonomic index based on Euclidean metrics is presented in section 3; the analysis of the diversified development of RF regions based on taxonomic indicators is given in section 4, a preliminary convergence/divergence analysis is presented in section 5, while section 6 provides a key conclusions.