ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the changes in regional inequality in Austria from the 1870s to the present. Drawing on a new data set, it is concerned with the extent and temporal evolution of regional income differentials and their main drivers. The extent and temporal evolution of regional inequality in Austria is measured through new estimates of regional GDP for 1870 to 1950 and official and semi-official regional income data for 1961 to 2014. The regional sub-sector outputs so obtained were then aggregated up into regional GDP. One way to think about regional inequality is in terms of so-called sigma-convergence, i.e. a reduction over time in the dispersion of per capita income levels across regions. Unlike many other economies in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, Austria after 1870 did not experience an inter-temporal pattern of regional inequality that conforms to an inverted U-shape, i.e. a pattern characterized by an initial increase in inequality followed by a subsequent decrease.
