Geographers have identified three types of regions: formal, functional, and vernacular.

In practice, three levels of economic regions are distinguished: large (macroregions), administrative (mesoregions), and lowest-level (microregions).

Three world’s major economic regions (North America, Western Europe, and East Asia) together account for as much as 80 percent of the global economy, with the North American region clearly dominant in terms of GDP per capita.

Detailed definition An economic region (ER) is a grouping of complete census divisions (CDs) (with one exception in Ontario) created as a standard geographic unit for analysis of regional economic activity.

The Bureau of Economic Analysis goes with this eight-region map of the US. Its regions are New England, the Mideast, the Southeast, the Great Lakes, the Plains, the Southwest, the Rocky Mountains, and the Far West. The BEA uses this map to compare economic data between regions.

Five regions that are key to the US economy

• The Energy Belt. Even if Europe falls into recession, demand from China and other developing countries, as well as threats from Iran to cut off the Persian Gulf, will keep energy prices high.
• The Agricultural Heartland.
• The New Foundry.
• The Technosphere.
• The Pacific Northwest.

A common way of referring to regions in the United States is grouping them into 5 regions according to their geographic position on the continent: the Northeast, Southwest, West, Southeast, and Midwest.

The eight official DHS-recognized global regions on the world map are Africa, Asia, Europe and Oceania in the Eastern hemisphere and the Caribbean and the three American zones (North, Central and South) in the Western hemisphere.

There are major economic differences among Canada’s four main geographic regions — Ontario, Quebec, the West and Atlantic Canada — each affected by its own history of economic development, industrial location, urbanization, land use and migration.