Regional analysis using self-organizing maps

Exploratory analysis of financial and economic data is being accepted as a very valuable and important stage of solving of majority of financial and economic tasks. We introduce a short overview of neural network approaches and applications in the financial and economic domain. Self-organizing map (SOM) used provides a unique and integrating neural network approach for proper and effective initial analysis of multidimensional financial and economic data. We provide a brief sketch of the basic types of analysis by means of SOM and illustrate their use on analysis of Slovak regions in terms of their budget income and expenditure data.