MEASUREMENT OF LITHUANIAN REGIONS BY REGIONAL COMPETITIVENESS INDEX: ASPECT OF ACCURACY INCREASEMENT

Abstract

In scientific literature the measurement of competitiveness by a composite index is considered to be one of the methods to analyze the problem in a complex way. In order to measure the regional competitiveness within the country, the new created Regional competitiveness index (RCI) is presented in the article.

The research of the measurement of Lithuanian regional competitiveness by RCI during 2001-2006 years let to find out, that:

− Accuracy of the measurement of regional competitiveness within the country by RCI mostly depends on the following techniques which are presented in the order of decreasing influence they make: a) techniques of the selection of factors, b) techniques of weighting the factors c) methods of data normalization.

− RCI of the medium competitive regions is more sensitive to the techniques of the selection of factors of regional competitiveness than the one of stronger or slighter competitive regions;

− RCI of more competitive regions is more sensitive to the techniques of weighting the factors of regional competitiveness than the one of less competitive regions;

− Normalization methods of standard deviation from the means or distance between the minimum and maximum values are more suitable for the calculation of RCI than methods of distance from an average or a group leader.

− In order to simplify the measurement of regional competitiveness within Lithuania by RCI and at the same time to get statistically reliable results, equal weight coefficients may be applied to all the factors of Lithuanian regions. When applying different techniques of weighting the factors, the results of ranking measurement, carried out with the help of RCI, do not change significantly.