Determining Local Economic Development in the Rural Areas of Romania. Exploring the Role of Exogenous Factors

Abstract

Based on data collected for 398 communes from the North-West development region of Romania between 2007 and 2014, this article presents a local economic development (LED) index for rural communities and identifies the main factors which influence LED in these communities. Our results show that exogenous factors, such as location in the influence area of urban communities and the existence of a direct connection to the European Road Network, influence the level of LED. At the same time nor the aforementioned exogenous factors nor other exogenous factors, such as non-refundable investments programs in local core infrastructure (financed by the European Union and the Romanian Government) which were designed to accelerate/spur economic development, as well as direct connections to the National Roads Network, do not have any statistically significant influence on spurring/accelerating LED (at least in this short period of time).

Urban or Rural: Does It Make A Difference for Economic Resilience? A Modelling Study on Economic and Cultural Geography in Romania

“…Regarding the rural communities in the region, this finding was rather surprising, considering previous studies [28,29]. In these previous studies, the crisis seemed to affect rural communities in the region starting already in 2009.…”

“…We selected a set of variables that are more likely to assess the economic performance of Romanian communities ( Table 1). Some of those indicators were used already in constructing the Local Economic Development (LED) index by Pavel et al [28] and Pavel and Moldovan [29]. The indicators may be considered as market indicators or as outcomes of the local economy, or as proxies for different components of local economic development such as dimension/size of economic activity, the level of productivity, density of economic activity, entrepreneurial initiatives, and real estate market and its attractiveness.…”

“…Rural rank refers to the area of influence where a commune is located; for a commune located in the immediate vicinity of a big city (the biggest in the region), the rank is 6, while for a commune located outside the influence of any city or, for isolated/deep-rural communities, the rank is 1. The ranks of the communes were established based on the Study for the Substantiation of an Update of the Plan for Landscaping the National Territory [53], as explained in [28] and [29]. We chose this variable as a possible resilience driver, since a large number of studies identified that proximity to an important urban area can positively influence nearby rural communities.…”

Ekonomická odolnost evropských venkovských regionů v období 2000 – 2016: případová studie čtyř států EU

“…Dosavadní analýzy odolnosti evropských regionů se zpravidla týkaly celé EU a neposkytovaly detailní vysvětlení regionálních rozdílů v jednotlivých státech (např. Annoni et al 2019, Giannakis, Bruggeman 2019, Cainelli et al 2019, Capello et al 2015, Ezcurra 2011, nebo se soustředily na regionální diferenciaci vývoje ekonomické výkonnosti či zaměstnanosti jednoho vybraného státu (Pavel, Moldovan 2019, Urso et al 2019, Ženka et al 2019. Zaměřujeme se na hodnocení ekonomické odolnosti venkovských regionů na úrovni NUTS3 v Česku, Itálii, Německu a Rumunsku v období 2000 -2016.…”

“…Abychom podchytili vliv výše diskutovaných faktorů regionální ekonomické odolnosti, přistoupili jsme k výběru zemí na základě následujících kontrastů: a) Sektorová struktura hospodářství: rumunské venkovské regiony si zachovávají poměrně vysokou míru specializace na primární sektor (Pavel, Moldovan 2019). Venkovské regiony v Česku jsou charakteristické vysokým podílem výrobních sektorů na zaměstnanosti a HDP (Eurostat 2020).…”