Connections between Ecologic Sustainability and Regional Competitiveness

Abstract

Both sustainability and regional competitiveness are in the centre of political and scientific attention. By now it is clear that enhancing competitiveness based on excessive exploitation of nature may be counterproductive by narrowing future social and economic alternatives.

In our study we highlight the basic characteristics of the relationship of natural capital and regional competitiveness. Therefore we analyze the special literature dealing with the interdependence of ecological and economic systems from the aspect of regional competitiveness. Afterwards we explore whether these scientific results have became part of economic disciplines that have relevant message regarding natural capital and regional competitiveness. These surveyed bodies of thinking are neoclassical economics, development economics, evolutionary economics, (new) institutional economics and the Portarian new economics of competition. We conclude that the relationship of natural capital and regional competitiveness is a rather neglected research area.