Abstract Regional economic development discrepancy has always been the key research domain in recent years, and a large number of achievements have been made in the domain. In order to study the regional economic development discrepancy more effectively, the authors summarize and analyze the achievements systematically. Mainly, three aspects are covered in this paper. They are as follows:
Fist of all, the authors divide the achievements into four types: 1) The spatial pattern of regional economic development discrepancy. From the viewpoint of space, scholars mainly concentrated on the nation, the developed region, the province and their contrasts. 2) The temporal evolution of regional economic development discrepancy. Scholars mainly discussed the temporal evolution characteristics of the east, middle and west zone, the south and the north region, the urban and rural areas. 3) The tendency prediction of regional economic development discrepancy. Scholars discussed the dynamic change of regional economic development discrepancy in the future. 4) The forming reasons of regional economic development discrepancy. Scholars found out six reasons, such as the Economy Spillover Effect, the Boundary Effect, the stickiness of regional grades process, the industrial structure and its transfer capability, the foreign direct investment, and policies, systems and behavior of the government.
Furthermore, the authors found scholars had made great contribution to the study of regional economic development discrepancy. There have been many achievements in the domain of regional economic development discrepancy. By analyzing the achievements, however, the authors found out there are some drawbacks in the researches as follows: 1) Neglecting the researches on under-developed regions. 2) Neglecting the researches on Border-Regions. 3) Neglecting the researches on city and small-scale administrative region. 4) Neglecting the researches on prediction and warning. 5) Neglecting the researches on dynamic mechanism. 6) The research on countermeasures is lack of pertinence.
Finally, on the basis of foregoing study about achievements, the authors found out some study directions which could be paid more attention to. Also, some suggestions have been put forward in the paper for the future research.
2008, Vol. 23 
