Does greater specialisation imply greater polarisation?
The globalisation of world economy going on now suggests the upgrading of the
role of regions. While the importance and the scope of actions on the level of national
economies are shrinking, the global and regional economies gain an ever-bigger ground
in the world economy.
Each region has peculiar assets, economic, social and cultural interests that make
them unique and different from the others. In the age of globalisation it is not only the
countries and the companies who are in competition for acquiring and utilising the
resources of development but also the regions of different level. In this competition
those regions prosper which are able to organise and expand efficiently a flexible
network of the intra-regional economic, social and economic actors. On the one hand
the process accelerates the upgrading of the intra organisational scope of the regions
which means that the companies mainly focus on the primary activities while other
secondary or additional functions are relocated outside the company but still in the
regional operational network. Those regions gain favourable position and get more from
the foreign investments, which besides the traditional assets can offer attractive
innovative economic environment and also the related institutional network of
economic development. Those regions, who have high awareness they are able to take
the time on their side.
The regional differences fell to the one third of the original in a way that besides
a constant minimum Budapest lost 65% of its industrial workers. It was partly because
of their move from the second into the third sector and partly because of the relocation
of the industries from capital into the agglomeration.
There is a new, dynamically growing zone, because the economies on the
periphery of the European Union - Ireland, Portugal, Spain, Finland- are growing faster
than the economies in the core area of the Union. The reason of this tendency is that the
wave of the global capital flow coming from the countries in the core of the EU has
been getting into these peripheral countries since the second half of the 1980’s. The
process was supported by the comparative advantages, which appeared in the relocation
of the localities in the industrial production. The chance of capital recovery is the
highest. At the end 90thies became visible the relocation of Western European industrial
production. Technological co-operation is advantageous for both Eastern- and Western
Europe. The relocation of production into cheaper economic surroundings and many
times closer to the actual market are also major points to be considered. A major feature
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