Yuliy Lipets, Institute of Geography, Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow, Russian Federation
The New European Economic Integration and SPS-Analysis (assigned to theme
The European Economic Integration is a discrete wavy process of the spatial diffusion. Its first stages proceeded into a relatively homogenous economic space. The most important features of its space were relatively similar economic indicators, for instance, income per capita, level of wages, transport and energy costs, convertibility of currencies, etc. But the transition from EU-15 to EU-25 has led to strong differentiation of economic indicators due to joining of new states to the integration space. All new EU-members had central-planning economies during 1945-1990 that formed its own system of economic indicators. That included besides standard ones inconvertible currencies, zero-rent on the land usage, water and other natural resources. To understand the economic nature of the differences in the personal income and wage level (2-3 times and more) between “old” and “new” EU-members new methods of regional analysis have become necessary. One of such methods is “Supply-Side Prices System” analysis (SPS-analysis). This method is needed for important addition to large body of literature on the common economic equilibrium theory. These works are based on the united analysis of mutual supply-demand price systems. But in the reality the supply side of the equilibrium equations has its own meaning in the economic analysis. The proposal of SPS-analysis can be concluded in two main aspects: 1) the prices’ level in the real currency operations; 2) the inner equilibrium in the supply-side price system. The retrospect research has shown that in the XX century there were 3 different SPSs: 1) the High Level SPS – for developed countries; 2) the Low Level SPS – for former Socialist countries; 3) the Mixed Level or Transitional SPS – for developing countries and countries in transition. The cross-border development in EU-25 between “old” and “new” members will depend on the detailed analysis of different SPSs and consequences of their influence on all regional economic conditions and processes. The special case is considered to be the Russian Kaliningrad exclave.
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