This article examines the link between economic globalization and spatial inequality in a panel of 142 countries over the period 1992–2012. Our instrumental variables estimates reveal a strong causal effect of the degree of economic integration with the rest of the world on spatial inequality, indicating that the advances in the process of globalization currently underway contribute to significantly increasing regional income disparities. This means that globalization leads to the emergence of losing and winning regions within countries and that the group of losing (winning) regions tends to be made up of low (high-)-income regions. This result has to do with the regressive spatial impact of actual economic flows, while existing restrictions on trade and capital do not exert a significant effect in this context. Our findings are robust to the inclusion in the analysis of different covariates that may be correlated with both spatial inequality and globalization and are not driven by a specific group of influential countries. Likewise, the observed relationship between economic integration and spatial inequality does not depend on the measures used to quantify the magnitude of regional income disparities within the various countries. At the same time, our estimates suggest that the spatial impact of globalization is contingent on the level of economic development.

本文研究了1992年至2012年期间142个国家组成的小组中的经济全球化与空间不平等之间的联系。我们的工具变量估计值表明，与世界其他地区的经济一体化程度对空间不平等具有强烈的因果关系，这表明当前正在进行的全球化进程的进步大大加剧了区域收入差距。这意味着全球化导致国家内部出现亏损和获胜地区，而亏损（获胜）地区的群体往往由低（高）收入地区组成。这一结果与实际经济流量的回归空间影响有关，而在这种情况下，对贸易和资本的现有限制并未发挥重大作用。我们的发现有力地证明了将不同的协变量包含在分析中的可能性，这些协变量可能与空间不平等和全球化有关，并且不受特定国家的影响。同样，观察到的经济一体化与空间不平等之间的关系并不取决于用来量化各国内部区域收入差异程度的措施。同时，我们的估计表明，全球化的空间影响取决于经济发展水平。观察到的经济一体化与空间不平等之间的关系并不取决于用来量化各国内部区域收入差异程度的措施。同时，我们的估计表明，全球化的空间影响取决于经济发展水平。观察到的经济一体化与空间不平等之间的关系并不取决于用来量化各国内部区域收入差异程度的措施。同时，我们的估计表明，全球化的空间影响取决于经济发展水平。