On Growth Poles from EU Countries in The Framework of Europe 2020

摘要

In the framework of Europe 2020 strategy for smart, sustainable and inclusive growth and of recent growth related theories we analyse the extent to which second-tier cities as growth poles contribute to the growth of the country with focus on EU member states. We conduct an analysis of the development of second-tier cities from the countries with similar level of development as Romania, with focus especially on employment related issues. The selection of growth poles will be done using clustering of EU member states for year 2010 based on the headline indicators from the Europe 2020 strategy (employment, research and development, climate change and energy sustainability, education, poverty and social exclusion) and resource productivity as lead indicator for resource efficiency, so as to highlight the different levels of development among EU countries. In order to ensure higher level of accuracy in clustering, from economic perspective we also include other indicators, such as GDP per capita and the index of economic freedom.