About regional competitiveness (by the Association of Regional Observatories)

If there is no generally accepted definition or theory of regional competitiveness, this has not stopped policy makers from devising policies designed to boost the competitiveness of this or that region or city.
Regional observatories provide high quality research and intelligence to England's regions.
Many of these policies ignore the role of local demand in stimulating the economy, advocate a universalism that fails to recognise that different "drivers" will be relevant in different regions, and fail to justify the spatial scale for intervention selected.
For Porter, the only meaningful concept of competitiveness is productivity.
Traditionally, in economics, the notion of comparative advantage (with roots going back to Ricardo and reformulated in modern guise by Heckscher and Ohlin) has been used rather than that of competitive advantage or competitiveness.
All of the problems associated with measuring and interpreting national or sectoral productivity carry over the regional case.
A similar view has been expressed by the EUROPEAN COMMISSION [The idea of regional competitiveness] : should capture the notion that, despite the fact that there are strongly competitive and uncompetitive firms in every region, there are common features within a region which affect the competitiveness of all firms located there.
If there is no generally accepted definition or theory of regional competitiveness, this has not stopped policy makers from devising policies designed to boost the competitiveness of this or that region or city.
A key insight is that regions don't compete in the same ways as firms, at least in part because they can't go "bust".

Lire le rapport sur http://www.regionalobservatories.org.uk/aro_regional_competitiveness.pdf