CLUSTER AND MULTICRITERIAL COMPARATIVE REGIONAL ANALYSIS – CASE STUDY OF CROATIAN COUNTIES

Croatia as EU accession country is divided into three Nomenclature des unites territoriales statistiques (NUTS 2) regions which are quite different from twenty one official administrative Croatian Counties. Furthermore, Croatian Counties show significant economic and social disproportions. These disproportions are in the focus of the extended on-going scientific research. The focus of this paper is regional multimethodological approach and its results comparative analysis. After Croatian Counties classification by hierarchical Cluster analysis, multicriterial comparative approach is used. Weighting process within Croatian Counties ranking is based on statistical linkage of a set of regional variables (regional GDP per capita, employment, gross investment, production of more important agricultural products, GVA per person employed, construction works value, exports, imports, foreign tourists arrivals, foreign tourists nights, ecology…). Subsequently, comparative rank analysis is realized by rank correlation coefficient hypothesis testing and Friedman test. At the end of this research phase all multimethodological approach results are compared with existing regional administrative division of Croatian territory