An Empirical Analysis of the Business Environment of Selected European Union Regions

The article is focused on the application of multivariety classification techniques for assessing the business environment of selected European Union regions. The theoretical part deals with the issue of identifying the factors, which boost the attractiveness of regions for possible investors. In accordance with a character of used data the authors have chosen the factor analysis and the cluster analysis for the classification process. As an input for the practical analysis such data sets have been selected which describe regional business environment in the EU. The initial number of chosen regions had to be reduced because of the missing data. The ZET algorithm has been applied to complete the mising values in the remaining number of regions. The following four indicators of business environment were created on the basis of factor analysis: the indicator of quality of labour forces and innovations, the indicator of labour market, the indicator of economic activity and the indicator of demographic development. Empirical classifications were explored on two different linkages by means of created factors. Individual clusters were compared by average values of factor scores. The results of comparison were discussed.