The feasibility of benchmarking indicators of regional competitiveness

Abstract

The concept of territorial competitiveness has gained ground in academic, policy and practitioner circles. In particular, urban competitiveness has generated a large literature that has informed the increased interest in and development of regional competitiveness. There is, however, a danger that competitiveness at a territorial level becomes a conceptual chimera. The critique of national competitiveness made by Paul Krugman that 'firms compete, nations don’t' could equally be applied at sub-national territorial levels. The essential problem is that territorially-based actors and agencies seek to position and maintain the utility of their regions and sub-regions by reference to a set of measures and indicators that are conceptually suspect and empirically weak.