Abstract
In the context of globalization and regional integration, for such small countries like Lithuania and Latvia, it is very important to keep theirs economic activity, be competitive and do not lose theirs notability both in the Baltic Sea region and over the Europe. Due to acceleration of internationalization process, each country's economy is starting to integrate into the wider markets, to search for the new niches and non-outgoing opportunities in order to strengthen economic potential and their competitive positions. The strengthening of economic potential by itself should not be straitening the country from its external neighbors. Contrarily, the counties’ cross-border cooperation should promote the most rapid economic and social development of these regions. In the scientific literature the cross-border region of different countries is treated as one region. However, performing the socio-economic analysis, there is a problem that the official socio- economic indicators of different countries are differ or part of them one or another country does not calculate at all. In scientific literature there is a lack of methodological basic of cross-border region's socio-economic evaluation, which, according to common economic and social indicators, is able unified to evaluate the development of cross-border region. The lack of methodological guidelines of cross-border socio-economic evaluation are becoming one of the obstacles which prevents to unified evaluate, analyze and ensure the socio-economic development of cross-border region as well as social and economic cohesion. The objective of the article: is to identify the specific of evaluation the socio-economic development of Lithuanian-Latvian cross-border region and provide methodological guidelines, based on the theoretical analysis of Klaipeda (Lithuania) and Kurzeme (Latvia) regions. In this article the cross-border region is defined as an administrative territorial unit consisting of two or more regions of neighbouring countries, with its own identity and some common historical, cultural and socio-economic characteristics, but the authorities representing the needs of different countries and political-legal norms. The authors look at the cross-border region as a solid region of two or more regions from different countries. The evaluation of Lithuanian-Latvian cross-border region economic-social development is based on the specifics of Klaipeda County (Lithuania) and the region of Kurzeme (Latvia). In this article the problematic of the evaluation of the Lithuanian - Latvian cross-border region economic - social development is analysed, the specifics of the cross-border region is identifies and the methodological guidelines, based on the theoretical analysis of development of Klaipeda (Lithuania) and Kurzeme (Latvia) regions, are presented. The model of evaluation the Lithuanian and Latvian cross-border region's economic and social development is presented, which became the methodological background for the formation of a unified system, consisting of 46 economic and social indicators. The article also presents scheme of evaluation of the Lithuanian-Latvian cross-border region economic-social development. The presented methodological backgrounds are useful for the drawing conclusions about cross-border economic-social development, identification of the strengths and weaknesses of the cross-border region and the overall social-economic trends, which are the prerequisite for the promotion of strategic decision, which are oriented to the stimulation of the development of cross-border region as well as evaluation of effectiveness of theirs implementation. This article is written on the base of the Latvia – Lithuania Cross Border Cooperation Programme 2007-2013 project Formation of methodological framework of regional business growth promotion (LT-LV) (project No. LV-LT/1.1/LLIII-152/2010), which was implemented by three partners: Kaunas University of Technology, Klaipeda University and Liepoja University. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5755/j01.em.17.3.2120
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