Using a comprehensive index technology to analyze structural changes in the regions’ economic development in a COVID-19 pandemic: the case of Ukraine

Abstract

The paper investigates the issues of evaluating structural changes in the regions’ economic development based on the comprehensive index assessment technology. The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on regional development and changes in the regional structure is considered. The authors propose the use of block convolution to design a comprehensive index based on a set of metric initial indicators that characterize the regions’ economic development. Grouping the set of initial indicators is carried out based on the method of an extreme grouping of parameters and the method of principal components. A weighted linear additive convolution was used to develop partial composite indices and an economic development comprehensive index. The practical approbation was carried out for the regions of Ukraine according to the data of 9 months of 2019 and the same period of 2020. To establish the regions’ structure, we used the division of the comprehensive index values into intervals and further distributing regions into classes according to the level of economic development. There is a general decrease in the value of the integrated indicator in 2020, caused by the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. However, no significant changes in the structure of the regions were detected, which indicates an equally negative impact of the pandemic for all regions of Ukraine.