The effects of societal culture attributes on regional disparity

Purpose: The main goal of this paper is to analyze the effects of societal culture attributes on regional disparity. Design/methodology/approach: This paper uses cross-country data to identify the variables that determine the regional disparity and the gap between the richest and poorest regions in the economy. Findings: The most interesting result of this study is that there exists a significant role played by societal cultural differences in the explanation of the regional disparity and the gap between rich and poor regions. Originality/value: As far as we know, this paper makes the first attempt to explain inter-regional disparity according to culture attributes. We estimate that cultural variables add about 5 percent to the explanation of the variation of the indices of inequality between regions.