Snowflake model of regional competitiveness: Evidence from Serbia

Abstract

The competitiveness of the region is ability to be productive and maintain a high standard of living. In this paper, we have created Snowflake model of regional competitiveness considering not only economic and social factors, but also infrastructure, innovations, geo-natural variables, institutional factors, culture and tourism. This model can be applied in any country or group of countries. The model shows the competitiveness of the region in three ways: 1) quantitatively - by the index of regional competitiveness, 2) ranking the region compared to other regions and 3) it possesses visual characteristic - represents snowflake of competitiveness. As part of our analysis, we measured the regions of Serbia. The reason is that Serbia has the largest regional differences in Europe, which was an additional motive to test the model.