Oddziaływanie efektów grawitacyjnych na wybrane czynniki rozwoju ekonomicznego powiatów województwa dolnośląskiego

The aim of this paper is to assess the impact of gravity effects on the diversity of economic development of Dolnośląskie Voivodeship counties in the years 2002–2013. This article describes spatial differences in economic development of Dolnośląskie Voivodeship counties, based on the taxonomic and cluster analysis methods. Moreover, it presents calculation and description of both, the individual and combined gravity effects in the counties. The article is based on the assumption that the individual gravity effects between two counties (by analogy with Newton’s law of gravity) are directly proportional to the product of the gross value of fixed assets per capita in these counties and inversely proportional to the square of the distance between the capitals of these counties. The article also states that the combined gravity effect in the particular county is a geometric mean of the individual gravity effects. A summary of considerations is presented in a form of a statistical analysis that assesses the impact of gravity effects on the spatial differences in economic development of Dolnośląskie Voivodeship counties.