The notion of competitiveness figures nowadays frequently and centrally both in economic policy and in regional development. Current economic development programmes, in short, have been directly responsible for the increasing attention devoted to analyses of regional competitiveness. At the same time, there is a growing consensus that a single notion of competitiveness can be found to describe processes of the globalising economy for companies (microlevel), industrial sectors and regions (mesolevel) as well as for national economies (macrolevel). The standard (common) concept of competitiveness has been partly developed in order to serve as a widely accepted theoretical definition, which can be measured and also be used by economic development policies. Competitiveness is intimately bound up with successful economic development. This study reviews the conceptual background and some special aspects of competitiveness and also looks more closely at one of the basic models of enhancing regional competitiveness. First, some aspects of the standard notion of competitiveness are discussed. Then some key indicators of the competitiveness of Hungarian regions will be investigated. I shall end by introducing the so-called pyramid model, which has been designed to measure and improve regional competitiveness.

lengyel imre-Varga attila a magyar gazdasági növekedés térbeli korlátai -helyzetkép és alapvető dilemmák "Ha meg szeretnénk érteni a nemzeti növekedé-si ütemek különbségeit, jó azzal indítani, miért különböznek a regionális növekedési ütemek." (Krugman [2003]

Over the past two and a half decades, the post-socialist countries of Central and Eastern Europe, including Hungary, have become an integral part of the global economy. Following the change of regime, the rate of foreign direct investment increased, modern industries emerged and exports became significant. However, this process was halted by the global economic crisis in many advanced and transition economies, and the concept of 'reindustrialization' emerged as one of the economic policy responses to the new challenges generated by the crisis. In our paper, we study whether reindustrialization is present following the lowest point of the crisis in one of the post-socialist countries of the EU, in Hungary. If so, in which regions and industries, and under what conditions? Our research indicates that reindustrialization can be generally observed only in a few rural regions after 2009, limited to only one or two industries, while, for instance, in the capital and in its agglomerations and in urban regions with large research universities, deindustrialization is more likely to take place.

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The examination of regional competitiveness has become a research question of outstanding importance in the Central European post-socialist countries since joining the EU. In our study we will proceed to analyse the competitiveness of 93 NUTS2 level regions of 8 Central European countries with the help of an empirical data base, using multivariable statistical methods. After introducing the database, we are going to investigate into the common revealed competitiveness indicator. Not only revealed competitiveness categories shall be analysed with the help of multivariable statistical procedures, but also the background processes described by the factor analysis and the multivariable linear regression model.