摘要：The starting point is the investigation of competitiveness ｨC resource and measure of development
within the context of internationalization and globalization of the world economy. At regional
level, competitiveness must capture the distinguishing features that influence the overall competitiveness
of the economic agents located in a certain region, despite the usual mix of highly and
less competitive economic agents. Such features might comprise, among others, social and physical
infrastructure, labor skills and public institutions efficiency. Defining the regional competitiveness
and correct identification of its determinants may be attempted in different manners ｨC either adaptations
for the regional level of the definitions of macroeconomic or microeconomic competitiveness
are attempted and the corresponding determinants are identified, or other ways to ｡ｰdeal with｡ｱ the
notion and to identify and, eventually, to aggregate the corresponding determinants are pursued.
In their attempt to assess regional competitiveness, the authors started from an operational
model that evaluates national competitiveness on the basis of five integrating criteria (each criterion
is an aggregation of several domains): overall operational economic performance, energy use, information
and communication technology, gross value added structure, participation on the international
markets.
The author｡ｯs central idea regarding the elaboration of a model to assess the regional competitiveness
is also that of using integrating criteria (complex indicators) able to reveal clearly the final
results of the efforts of the national and local governments, the business environment and the civil
society aimed at increasing the regional competitiveness of the EU countries. Thus, following the
performed analyses certain domain-grouped criteria were selected, regarding the overall economic
performances of the regions, labor quality and skills, business environment, research-development
and innovation, infrastructure and environment ｨC analyzed through domain-specific indicators. In
the authors｡ｯ opinion, the proposed model fully satisfies the requirements of an operational model to
assess the regional competitiveness, because it employs significantly integrating criteria and it uses
comparable data resulted by applying quasi-unitary methodologies, accessible each year for a large
number of countries and regions, which will allow for multi-annual comparisons in the future.
关键词：regional competitiveness, national competitiveness models, integrating criteria, complex
indicators.
