REGIONAL COOPERATION AND ECONOMIC INTEGRATION

PART I:
their state of development is different from the group of countries examined. Furthermore,
Serbia-Montenegro had to be excluded because of missing data in some areas. Thus the
circle of countries was extended by 10 more to include 50 countries in total: Malta, Cyprus,
Bulgaria, Rumania, Latvia, Lithuania, Croatia, the Ukraine, Bosnia & Herzegovina and
Macedonia.
The international rankings containing several aspects offer two types of situation analysis:
one based on the place in the ranking and another based on the sets of values that create
the ranking itself. If one wants to draw conclusions via the ranking position, one must face
a series of issues in addition to the fact that the rankings are not cumulative nor can they
be directly compared. On the one hand, because the countries are ranked on the basis of
their respective values of competitiveness, or, to be more precise, to the assumption that
a better position reflects a better state of welfare and that it implies better future shaping
conditions and a better position for development. On the other hand, the ranking position
of individual countries does not reflect the difference between the quality level of their
respective performances and the non-even changes or leaps thereof.
In view of the above the sets of values themselves are more representative. Obviously,
due to their nature they are not cumulative either. It can also be an issue that the value
data of some index does not reflect the general standard of performance of the examined
countries. I.e. it cannot be judged how much a good performance as per a given aspect (e.g.
the level of freedom of economic activities) is actually worth on an international scale, and
how much it contributes to the development possibilities between the other countries.
Therefore we need the data of the ranking positions, which express the hierarchic structure
of world economics and the future development possibilities resulting from the different
potentials for development. Also, the data are not concentrated around one value, they are
widespread enough to describe realistic potentials and conditions. Finally, the unwritten
laws of today’s world economics are determined by the Euro-Atlantic perspective and
competitiveness, which Hungary and Spain must also be subject to.
To be able to compare the aspects of rankings both the values and the positions must
be considered in a complex way. Each must express the relative performance of the
given country compared to the leading ones. The point of reference is not a special
reference value – which is not even available most of the time, although there are indices
made up this way – but the best performing country taking into consideration the weakest
performance of the selected group of countries. This way the actual scope of values will
be examined, since the bottom limit value is not zero. Although this approach does not
allow to go beyond the scope of competitiveness, within this scope it does ensure a good
evaluation.
The totalled impact of the relative results of the positioning and the value data has been
considered according to their respective geometric average as follows here (Gáspár.
2008a):
Relative Total Performance =
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