| Spatial economic disparities are gaining renewed intellectual and political attention in recent years, because accelerating global economic integration, and market-centered institutional transformations are suspected to intensify spatial disparities at various scales. This study examines trajectories of interregional per capita income disparities in the United States and Japan between 1955 and 2001 to determine the nature and the cause of any shift in disparities after the period of industrial and spatial restructuring during the 1970s. I conceptualize regional per capita income disparity as a multidimensional concept, which encompasses not only interregional inequality to measure the degree of regional income convergence, but also modality to identify possible polarization of regional income distribution, mobility to capture the flux of regional income hierarchies, spatial dependence to detect clustering of high/low income regions, and scalar shift to address possible shifts in the functionally integrated extent of economic space.; The spatial statistical analysis reveals that the patterns of regional income disparities have indeed changed in the two countries during the 1970s, but the post 1970s regional disparity trajectories are far from a simple reversal of the preceding convergence, entailing episodes of temporary divergence, increasingly solidified regional income hierarchies, and spatial fragmentation of previously-integrated economic regions. Major differences between the two countries are found in the timings of temporary divergence, trends of scalar shift, and the directional relationship between regional income inequality and national economic growth rates. These crossnational differences largely hold when major geographic and sectoral variables are controlled for, implying the importance of institutional, political, and cultural factors in accounting for distinct regional income disparity patterns.; Based on the analysis, I argue that existing theories of regional income disparity, including neoclassical convergence theory, endogenous growth theory, and Marxist theory, are insufficient to explain the historical trajectories of, and the crossnational differences in regional income disparities in the two countries. I contend that contemporary regional income disparity patterns are fundamentally related to global financial liberalization since the 1980s, which induced distinct responses by investment capitals, corporations, and the national governments in each country, resulting in the observed patterns of regional income disparities. |
