Abstract
The two most important politico-economic trends in the past few decades of Europe are: firstly, the difficult economic readjustment of the former Soviet bloc consequent to the collapse of the Soviet Union, and the integration of many ex-Soviet bloc countries into the European Union and globalized economy; and secondly, the strain on the Union, especially on its periphery, caused by the 2008 economic crisis. This research will examine the relative change in per-capita GDP across European NUTS2 regions, as well as possible factors behind the change, including labor force size by economic sector, fixed capital investment, current accounts, and so forth, as former Soviet Bloc Central European economies are incorporated into the European Union. Analytical methods used include Moran's I analysis, LISA, and OLS, with SAR and GWR planned in future research. Results show that there has been a homogenization of per-capita GDP across Europe, but not within large European countries; and that this homogenization stopped and reversed slightly during the worst of the recent economic troubles. In addition, the various economic sectors exhibited different behavior during the boom and recession during the past decade.