RCI 2010: Some in-depth analysis

The European 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 two-fold 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.JRC.DG.G.3-Econometrics and applied statistic