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Römisch, Roman --- "Regional disparities within accession countries" [2003] ELECD 16; in Tumpel-Gugerell, Gertrude; Mooslechner, Peter (eds), "Economic Convergence and Divergence in Europe" (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2003)

Book Title: Economic Convergence and Divergence in Europe

Editor(s): Tumpel-Gugerell, Gertrude; Mooslechner, Peter

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

ISBN (hard cover): 9781843762416

Section: Chapter 10

Section Title: Regional disparities within accession countries

Author(s): Römisch, Roman

Number of pages: 26

Extract:

10. Regional disparities within
accession countries
Roman Römisch

10.1. INTRODUCTION

Not long ago ­ in my student days ­ I made a short visit to Prague. Most
of the time I just behaved as any other ordinary tourist; wandering around
in the inner city I was impressed by the marvellous historical buildings.
Even more impressive seemed to me the stage of development of the Czech
capital ­ there were almost no differences to what I was used to from
Vienna. However, one day I decided to visit the place where Mozart finished
his famous opera Don Giovanni ­ the Bertramka villa which lies somewhat
outside the old town in the suburbs. I noticed with some surprise that the
suburbs of Prague are not as nice to look at as the inner city and I suddenly
realized that it is not always wise to take the old town of Prague as pars pro
toto1 for the rest of the city or even the country.
Today, being a researcher on regional economic development, I know
that these regional differences exist within the Central and Eastern
European (CEE) countries. However the fact that the Oesterreichische
Nationalbank has invited me, an as yet not very distinguished economist,
to write about regional disparities in the CEE countries shows that this
knowledge is not very widespread. As a consequence this chapter is struc-
tured to raise the general knowledge about the CEE regions, starting off in
the first section with some basic facts about regional disparities in per
...