This article focuses on estimating the trade structure between regions in
Korea. It is estimated through Wilsonian entropy measure for the period 199
5～2000. The major findings are that the ratios of larger regions in terms of
intra-regional trade had increased more than those of smaller regions, while
the patterns of inter-regional trade turned out comparatively stable. These
results imply that there will be an undesirable effect on economic growth in the
light of the hypothesis that the expansion of an inter-regional trade contributes
to economic growth and balanced growth among regions, which is verified by
a lot of theories and empirical tests.
These findings provide several implications on the relationship between the
inter-regional trade structure and economic growth. First, the expansion of
intra-regional trade diminishes the spillover and feedback effect, which may
lead to the larger gap of growth between metropolitan regions and the other
regions. Second, the “trickle-down” effect, which has so far been considered
as the basic and significant eAn-ffect of the Korean regional economic
development, will be limited. The reason is that the expansion of
intra-regional trade goes faster than that of inter-regional trade. Third, for the
previous five years in question the inter-regional trade has tended to remain
constant. It means that the mobility, which is a motive for growth, also
remains the same.
According to the empirical findings, the decreasing mobility among regions
indicates that growth potentials of Korean regions are becoming smaller than
before. So instead of the intensive investment, including the deregulation of
development, on the certain region such as Seoul metropolitan area,
co-development plans among regions and specialization policies for the
undeveloped regions should be promoted.