Book Description

The "Finnish way" of economic growth has proven successful over the past decade, and has promoted relatively balanced development across the country. In order to maintain its capacity for economic competitiveness and development, Finland is dealing with challenges that may affect future outcomes and highlight regional development issues. Given intense competition in both ICT and more traditional product markets, as well as rapid ageing of the population, how can Finland maintain and enhance the competitiveness of those regions that are the nation's economic drivers? How can the country promote innovation and entrepreneurship in intermediate cities particularly vulnerable to low cost competition and thus permanently upgrade the quality of regional products and services? How can Finland facilitate growth in those regions that have potential for development, but so far have been less successful in exploiting their comparative advantages? Together with a renewed interest in the contribution of regional development to national growth, these questions imply increased attention to multi-level governance issues. The Territorial Review of Finland is integrated into a wider programme of national territorial reviews undertaken by the OECD Territorial Development Policy Committee. The overall aim of the territorial review series is to provide practical policy advice to national governments. Recent national territorial reviews have covered Canada, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Italy, Japan, Korea, Mexico and Switzerland.