The new participatory approach of Italian policymakers to regional policies has led to a set of instruments called negotiated planning. In this paper it is argued that the new measures may suffer from drawbacks similar to the ones often imputed to public enterprise: ambiguity of objectives,...

Despite large regional policy expenditures, regional inequalities in Europe have not narrowed substantially over the last two decades, and by some measures have even widened. Income differences across States have fallen, but inequalities between regions within each State have risen. European...

Five years ago the first theoretical works on industry clusters in regional development appeared in the Czech academic papers and conference proceedings. The research in this field, which was initiated at the Faculty of Economics at VSB-Technical University of Ostrava, was followed by other...

This paper investigates the theoretical backgrounds of the “cluster” and proposes a framework aiming at drawing the contour of cluster theory. The profundity of the notion of ‘clusters’ is arguably conditional on the coherence of three fundamental issues associated with the concept: 1)...

It is a very generally accepted view that financial support received from the European Union generates a large growth surplus. The potential effects of the structural funds calculated in model simulations carried out by the European Commission support the

This paper deals with the spatial relationship between national and European regional policies. Spatial coherence of these two types of policies in two CEE countries – in the Czech Republic and Slovakia – is discussed. Our findings point at a higher spatial coherence of national and European...

The article presents the institutional support for the optimization of resource potential of country, and also its regions. There is given the definition of institutes with their three characteristic elements. There are also considered the problems of the institutional support of public regional...

The economic and financial crisis has brought firms, territories and countries before a set of restrictions to a greater or lesser extent, function as the conditioners of economic activity for several agents, also affecting their activities associated with the development of its innovation...

The paper focuses on challenges and potentials for policy in the presence of fundamental change processes that influence the long-term evolution of regions. The perspective in the paper implies that policy can be viewed as ‘management of change’. We present a conceptual model for...

Infrastructure development is a priority on policy agendas in the EU and worldwide, because of the very high investment needs in basic infrastructure, especially in lagging behind regions and countries. The paper provides a descriptive analysis of the infrastructural gaps in EU transition...