THE CURRENT STATE AND DYNAMICS OF REGIONAL DISPARITIES IN ROMANIA

The paper aims to highlight the dynamics and current state of regional disparities in Romania,discussing both inter-regional disparities -between the eight development regions, corresponding tothe NUTS II level- and intra-regional disparities -between the counties (corresponding to theNUTS III level) included in each region. The analysis of regional disparities has been based on aseries of data and indicators provided by Romanian official statistics for 2000 and 2005, processedby various statistical methods. We constructed a new variant of the relative distances rankingmethod adapted to the objective of our study, so as to make it possible to measure simultaneouslythe intra and inter-regional disparities. Based on a multidimensional index of inequality, the 41Romanian counties plus Bucharest municipality have been ranked and included into four majordevelopment categories, according to their relative position in economic development. Gini index,Herfindahl index and Theil index have been also employed, showing a low level of concentration,which suggests a relatively low amplitude of both inter-regional and intra-regional disparities.