The Determinants and Characteristics of Regional Competitiveness

The purpose of this research is to identify the determinants of regional competitiveness, in order to increase policy effectiveness and to anticipate implications for government agencies, as the paradigm in regional development policy has shifted from ‘balance’ to ‘efficiency’. Regional competitiveness is very important, as it eventually determines national competitiveness. Accordingly, the goal of this paper is to figure out which factors are key in improving regional competitiveness. In general, factors vary depending on the size of the city or the type of specialized local industries.This paper consists of two parts. The first part deals with regional competitiveness across the 232 SiGunGu(市郡區) which was measured using population growth, employment growth, value added per capita in the manufacturing industry, value added per capita growth in the manufacturing industry, profit per capita in the service industry, and profit per capita growth in the service industry. The second part focuses on the determinants of regional competitiveness that can be derived from the survey data from 24 key SiGunGus selected according to their regional competitiveness. From the regression analysis in the discrete model, policy implications on how to improve regional competitiveness were considered, focusing on region-made and type-made policies