Regional inequality in countries of the European Union

This Bachelor thesis tries to figure out the causes of regional inequality in general, by doing a literature review on literature about regional inequality and regional growth. Also it contains an analyses on which of these causes have contributed to the development of regional inequality within countries of the European Union over the period 2000-2011. The factors that influence regional inequality are the development process, human capital dispersion, physical capital dispersion, changes in openness to international trade, agglomeration economies and redistributive government policies. For the richer EU countries regional inequality turned out to be a stable from 2000 to 2011, excluding France and the United Kingdom. For France and the United Kingdom, a disproportionally big capital city turned out to be the cause for increasing regional inequality. For the poorer Eastern European countries, the development process and the EU accession followed by intensified trading turned out to be the major drivers behind increasing regional inequality.