Investments’ background of entrepreneurial zones in Croatia

ABSTRACT The topic of this paper is entrepreneurial zones as a part of entrepreneurial infrastructure in Croatia as a tool for gaining economic development. The purpose of this paper is to analyse different sources of investments in entrepreneurial zones in counties/municipalities on different development levels; who invests more: the state, the county itself, the municipality or the private sector. The research is carried out using the development index for municipalities and counties of the Ministry of Regional Development and European Union Funds and investments data of the State Audit Office. The paper is the first, not only in Croatia, to deal with investment distribution in entrepreneurial zones. The authors found that within groups of poorer counties, more developed municipalities invested more in their entrepreneurial zones, but also, they received more money from the state and county. That is not the case within the group of most developed counties, where there is no link between the development index of their local government units and investments by the county, the state and other sources. Further, municipalities in more developed counties on average received fewer investments from municipality and the state than they would have to get based on their development index