INTELLECTUAL ECONOMICS 2008, Number 1(3)
Gediminas MačysCOHESION AND COMPETITIVENESS OF REGIONS IN LITHUANIA
Mykolas Romeris University Publishing Centre. Vilnius. Lithuania 2008 Nr.1(3), p. 41–50
Abstract
The growing interest has emerged in the ‘regional foundations’ of national competitiveness, and with
developing new forms of regionally-based policy interventions to help improve the competitiveness of every region
and major city, and hence the national economy as a whole.
In fact, a still small but rapidly growing literature now exists on the topic of ‘territorial competitiveness’. However,
this new focus on ‘place competitiveness’ raises a host of questions as to what, precisely, is meant by the
competitiveness of regions, cities and localities. First findings on the evaluation of regionally-based national policy
interventions, their impact on territorial cohesion and resulting comparative advantages of regions of Lithuania are
analyzed in this paper. The findings indicate a higher investment in infrastructure than in the knowledge economy
development, also a faster development in already strong areas of the country. At the same time there appears to exist
a tendency towards further agglomeration of high-income economic activities. This signals that the growth generated
by the cohesion support might lead to widening regional disparities. For least-developed regions these interventions
should help to consolidate local resources and facilitate efforts to build up key capital factors that will help to guarantee
their future competitive success, for more-developed regions and big towns of Lithuania are likely in need to
employ a wider range of different interventions addressing specific market failures that hold back their performance
and competitiveness.
Keywords: regions, cohesion, competitiveness, comparative advantages.