Abstract
This chapter describes the reform environment in Bulgaria - focusing on macroeconomic stabilization and structural reform -so as to set the stage for the regional analysis that follows. It explores a short description of Bulgaria’s various territorial subdivisions since the country’s reemergence from the Ottoman Empire in 1878. The chapter presents data on, and various generalized entropy indexes of, regional inequality in an attempt simultaneously to obtain an overview of the regional dispersion of the economic transformation process and to evaluate the country’s territorial subdivision. Bulgaria’s system of territorial administration has gone through a series of major changes since the country’s independence in 1878. Bulgarian economic geographers have argued in favor of a territorial subdivision of the country something like that which prevailed when communism fell in 1989. The chapter examines Bulgarian regional disparities with respect to important variables characterizing the transformation of the economy from a centrally planned to a market basis.