Regional analysis of public capital expenditure: to which regions is public capital expenditure channelled – to "rich" or to "poor" ones?

Abstract

The paper aims to contribute to the debate on the regional dimension of sectoral (i.e. non-regional) policies and to empirically demonstrate the huge discrepancy between both the volume and the regional pattern of sectoral public capital expenditure policies on the one hand, and official regional policy on the other. The analyses were based on a unique database of public investment in the Czech Republic covering the years 1995–2005. Their results show significant conflicts in policy objectives and thus represent a clear argument in favour of pursuing territorial impact assessment (TIA) of sectoral policies.