中文摘要：

区域差异已成为中国经济高速增长背后的一大隐忧,如何实现区域经济协调发展是中国经济社会发展的核心议题,也是近年来国内外研究的热点命题。基于＂最优尺度—总体趋势—差异方向—机制因素＂的框架,综合运用传统总体差异指数、尺度方差及其分解、特定方向差异指数（PDI指数）和多水平回归分析对1978-2011年广东省区域经济差异进行了综合测度和分析。研究表明：①尺度方差及其构成大小依次排列为县级、地级和区级,即尺度越小,尺度方差越大,对区域经济差异的贡献份额也越大。②自改革开放以来,广东区域经济总体差异呈增大趋势,并出现波动性变化。③广东区域经济空间差异的主要方向是珠三角核心区与边缘地区之间,核心区与边缘区的差距扩大,省内沿海地区与内陆地区的差异微弱上升,市区与外围区的差异缩小。④全球化、简政放权、投资水平和市场化是导致区域经济差异的最重要的四个机制因素;全球化和投资是促进区域经济差异加剧的重要直接驱动力,简政放权则间接促进了区域经济差异的变大,而市场化能够潜在地促进区域平衡发展,缓和区域经济差异。

英文摘要：

Regional inequality is an important issue in geographical research and regional development studies. China＇s market reform and economic growth have aroused considerable attention to the issue of inequality and social justice. The recent research on economic geography indicates that regional inequality has been playing an important part in coordinated development of regional economy. Although regional inequality is a hot issue in research at home and abroad,the current research ignores the directions as well as the main scalar for regional inequality. With the availability of data,this paper,based on the framework of ＂Optimal scale,Overall trend,Direction for inequality,Mechanism factors＂,employs conventional global inequality indexes,scale variance,particular direction index and multi-level regression analysis to examine the regional inequality in Guangdong province from 1978 to 2011. Firstly,with the scale variance and its decomposition,we find that there is an increasing sequence according to the scale variances and their decomposition,which reveals that the scalar variance lower at the smaller scale contributes more to the whole regional inequality. Secondly,we use conventional global inequality indexes including coefficient variance,Gini coefficient,Theil index,Global entropy index and Atkinson Index to explore the overall changing trends of regional inequality in Guangdong and find that since the reform and open-up,they all experienced increasing trends and fluctuated change. Thirdly,using the particular direction index（PDI index）,we discover that the main direction of regional inequality in Guangdong is the ＂core-periphery＂ structure direction,and the gap between the core-periphery is increasing. However,the regional inequalities of the coast-inland and center-periphery are weakly rising and lessened respectively. Lastly,with the multi-level regression analysis,we discovered that globalization,decentralization,investment and marketization are the four important mechanisms which result in regio