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Abstract
Although both theoretically and methodologically controversial, measuring competitiveness at sub-national level remains an exciting challenge for analysts. The paper starts with the review of the recent theoretical and empirical literature on regional competitiveness in the European Union, followed by empirical analysis of competitiveness of Croatian regions, tackling differences between the hard data and the survey data as well as clustering the Croatian regions based on their main competitive strengths and weaknesses.
Notes
1. The early version of this paper was presented at the conference ‘Regional Policy and Decentralisation in South East Europe’ held in Zagreb, 10–11 May 2010; organized by the London School of Economics and Institute for International Relations (IMO), Zagreb. The authors are grateful to useful comments from reviewers as well as from conference participants which contributed to the present final version of the paper.
2. Cf. Regions 2020 (EC Citation2008a); Europe 2020 (EC Citation2010a) and Fifth Progress report on economic and social cohesion (EC Citation2008b), Community Strategic Guidelines (2007–2013); Barca report (Citation2009) etc.
3. Available under: http://europa.eu/lisbon_treaty/glance/index_en.htm.
4. There were couple of expert meetings on the issue of developing regional indicators organized by OECD such as The Use of Indicators for Regional Development Policies in 2006 and The Efficiency of Performance Indicator Systems in Regional Policy in 2007.
5. Cf. Sixth progress report on economic and social cohesion (EC Citation2009).
6. Various issues of this publication available at: http://epp.eurostat.ec.europa.eu/portal/page/portal/publications/eurostat_yearbook_2010/previous_editions.
7. Economic performance, Employment, Training and lifelong learning, Research and Development/Innovation, Telecommunication networks, Transport and Internationalization.
8. There are three sub-indeces (inputs, outputs and outcome). Input factors are business density, knowledge based business and economic participation, while output is productivity and outcome comprises earnings and unemployment (Huggins et al. Citation2008).
9. These are: Operating enterprises per 1000 inhabitants, Population density, drainage gap (Length of sewage drain per 1 km water pipeline), Cars per 1000 inhabitants, Unemployment rate and Population at the end of year.
10. These are: Operating enterprises per 1000 inhabitants, Flats built, Fertility rate, Retail units per 1000 inhabitants, Long term unemployment rate and Flats connected to the water pipeline.
11. The article is based on the background research that authors Jurlin and Vuckovic have conducted in order to conceptualize RCI methodology; gather all quantitative and qualitative data as well as create and calculate regional composite indicators for the RCI 2010 published by NCC and UNDP (Citation2011).
12. However, since 1 January, new classification of Croatia into two NUTS-2 regions (Continental Croatia and Adriatic region) entered into force.
13. The comparison in the rankings between the two reports should be only indicative due to changes in methodology for the calculation of 2010 index. Several indicators were redefined and the new ones were introduced (depending on the data availability). Second, there were also some changes regarding the weights in calculating the indeces and sub-indeces: e.g. while in 2007 we used weighted averages for individual survey indicators, in 2010 the simple averages were used. Moreover, there was also a larger weight (2/3) given to statistical than perceptive indicators in final step of calculating the competitiveness ranks in 2010; as well as to business environment relative to business sector pillar.
14. The Barca’s Report (DG REGIO 2009, 81) also shares this opinion when it comes to assessing the effectiveness of the EU cohesion policy. He argues that the data on convergence do not say anything if the performance of the regions would be better or worse without the cohesion policy.
15. See conclusions of the World Bank’s study on Croatia's EU convergence report (WB Citation2009).
16. We single out two examples of such policy documents. One is Strategy for development of Medimurje County 2011–2013 (REDEA Citation2011) and the other is Strategy for development of Split-Dalmatia County (RERASD Citation2011). Both of these strategies used RCI as data source for the analysis of counties’ positions, defining their strengths and weaknesses and finally as background for the strategic planning, specific priorities and measures. At the national level, the RCI findings and recommendations were used in Operational Program for Regional Competitiveness (2007–2013), a programme document prepared for the use of the EU funds by the Ministry of Regional Development and EU Funds (Citation2012).
17. Apart from the two pioneering Regional Competitiveness Indeces for Croatia (2007 and 2010), there is a lack of more comprehensive research measuring progress in this area. Fortunately, the third RCI is already in progress, but the future research should also enrich the availability of regional indicators of human development index, including the regional poverty index which could be very useful for future cohesion policy in Croatia.