Economic development at the international and national level depends on the process of development of individual regions. General economic indicators (income, employment, productivity) distort reality, as behind them lie economic and social inequalities both between countries and between regions of each country, due to the asymmetric functioning of the capitalist state, the historical course of society, as well as the nature of man.

The object of the book is the critical overview of the main theoretical approaches (classical, neoclassical, Keynesian, liberal-evolutionary, radical, Marxist and neo-Marxist) that interpret the unequal regional economic development.
Knowledge of the mechanism and factors that influence the development processes of specific areas allows us to shape a comprehensive and unified theory that fully explains the causes of the multifaceted inequalities as well as the conditions for the long-term evolution of the regional economy of developed and developing areas.