Regional diversity on unemployment is one of the most concerning issues in Europe since the last decade.
The purpose of this study is to verify the possibilities of convergence of unemployment rate among regions and the role of the appropriate regional policy focusing on the United Kingdom and Japan respectively.
We are adopting the empirical approach by Beveridge curve (UV curve) relation in detail, and then analysing the wage functioning at labour market and the industrial structure separately.
The results asserted through this positive analysis are as follows.
1) In the Great Britain or the United Kingdom, excluding Northern Ireland, regional disparities on the labour market are not caused by structural differences, however, is a manifestation of differences in degrees. On the other hand, Japanese regional disparities on the labour market are larger than in the United Kingdom. Furthermore, degrees of disparities in the United Kingdom are diminishing remarkably in the 1990's.
This is a result that the labour market in the United Kingdom has restored its flexibility enough to let the adjustment mechanism work in the late 1980's.
2) The regions with high unemployment rate are in principle the objectives for regional policies generally managed by the European Union and the United Kingdom. But when structural differences are not the primary factors of the regional disparities, the regional policy does not have to deal with labour market directly.