Why is interregional inequality in Russia and China not falling?

In large and heterogenous countries, cross-regional inequality often fuels political conflict over redistributive demands. Standard economic theory holds that initial inequality in incomes across subnational regions of a country should eventually give way to convergence. However, economic liberalization in Russia and China has not produced crossregional convergence. The paper demonstrates that interregional inequality remains high in both countries and grounds explanation for this finding in their communist institutional legacies. Their common institutional history complements country-specific explanations for the observed trends in cross-regional inequality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]