RCI 2010: Some in-depth analysis

The mission of the JRC-IPSC is to provide research results and to support EU policy-makers in their effort towards global security and towards protection of European citizens from accidents, deliberate attacks, fraud and illegal actions against EU policies. Legal Notice Neither the European Commission nor any person acting on behalf of the Commission is responsible for the use which might be made of this publication. (*) Certain mobile telephone operators do not allow access to 00 800 numbers or these calls may be billed. Commission has recently published the first edition of the Regional Competitiveness Index (RCI) (Annoni and Kozovska, 2010). The index provides a tool to improve the understanding of competitiveness at the regional level by showing the strengths and weaknesses of each of the European regions at the NUTS2 level in a number of dimensions related to competitiveness. The analysis offered by the first edition of the RCI is a snapshot of regional competitiveness as it is in 2010 and is based upon data mostly spanning between 2007 and 2009. The present document takes a step further and offers a twofold analysis based on the RCI indices: an exploratory spatial data analysis and an analysis of possible relationships between exogenous indicators and the RCI index and sub-indices. The exploratory spatial data analysis shows the existence of spatial dependence among EU regions, with different patterns for different areas within the EU. This can be taken as an indication for the existence of spatial externalities among regions and, when observed for high performing regions, as evidence, or better, as necessary condition for spillover effects. The Moran's global index of spatial autocorrelation shows that there exists spatial autocorrelation for the RCI index as well as the three sub-indices – basic, efficiency and innovation. Local clusters of low RCI values, as evidenced by the analysis of Local Indicators of Spatial Association (LISA), are located in Bulgaria, Romania, Greece and Cyprus, SouthEastern regions of Hungary and Slovakia, Southern part of Italy, Portugal and Spain. These areas show significant results for low-low clusters, meaning that regions with low RCI scores are surrounded by low scoring regions. On the other hand, local clusters of high RCI values are found in regions in the Netherlands, parts of Germany, Belgium, Denmark, the southern part of United Kingdom, Finland and Sweden. Executive summary ii Overall, LISA analysis allowed us to distinguish between two sub-areas in the EU: group …