MEASURING REGIONAL COMPETITIVENESS

European Union measures competitiveness of regions on the basis of gross domestic product (GDP) per capita which means goods and services produced in a year by one inhabitant of a given spatial unit. As a sole index of regional competitiveness GDP cannot produce exact outcome since it includes incomes their possessors can drive away from the given region. In other aspects, however, GDP is based on real, objective data, so it is purely driven by economics, therefore it hardly can integrate other factors just as the ones being important in determining the life standards of the inhabitants in that region. As to our knowledge no model was introduced that can take both objective and subjective factors into consideration in being able to describe the changes in a complex way. Of course it is not the model maker to blame, but the question itself points out the basic problem that makes elaboration of a complex model or index rather difficult.