Indexing the Innovative Capability of Romanian NUTS 3 Subdivisions (Counties)

Creating an innovation aggregate index for Romania is a challenging task, partly due to the lack of the necessary statistical data, but also due to the absence of officially registered data at local administrative unit level. In spite of this deficiency, we will put forward an innovation index comprised of several indicators originating from the data banks of the National Institute of Statistics and the State Office for Inventions and Trademarks, for the county subdivisions of the Romanian territory. Our results point out, as expected, to an extremely heterogeneous and unequal situation, with only a handful of counties above the national average and thus presenting a positive skew ness of the aggregate data.