Established regional differences – Determination of long-term trends based on economic indicators.

In recent years, the world has had different challenges and needs to analyze and track trends in regional economies. This paper examines economic indicators leading to spatial differentiation within macro-regions for the case of both Bulgaria and Russia as countries that have similar conditions on some key indicators of regional development. The analysis period is long - 20 years in order to be able to derive more specific trends in the behavior of production activity. Data on regional gross domestic product, population, foreign direct investment and employment were used as a basis, treating the sectoral and spatial variation within local emerging markets. Hirschman-Herfindahl index is calculated to highlight leading economic activities in different regions for an explanation of ongoing trends nature and an assessment of diversification degree of the spatial distribution of economic activities. We find using the multivariate OLS model that diversification in construction has a stronger influence on regional growth than diversification of the total amount of all investments in all sectors of resourse region. We concluded that foreign direct investment in the regional economies of Bulgaria and the Siberian macro-region would contribute to infrastructural development, which we will investigate later in our next joint works. The guidelines in the differences that are derived are of particular importance in the planning of regional policies and preparation of strategic documents and predetermine the need to analyze regional economies periodically and systematically. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]