New Measure of Economic Development Based on the Four-Colour Theorem

Abstract

The location quotient is one of the basic quantitative tools for identifying the regional poles and the turnpikes of economic growth in spatial economy. The disadvantage of this traditional measure is the limited scope of economic information contained in it. The new measure of economic development proposed in the article encompasses a complex spectrum of phenomena in one number, as it takes into account the influence of the public administration sector, as well as top technology in the form of ICT and its practical business models. It also takes into account the digital prosumption and the platforms for participation. The participation platforms in the public administration sector are the websites of municipal public administration offices. A cluster analysis was used to distinguish four quality classes of these websites. These classes were assigned four different colours, which were then used to draw up a map of the selected province. Each municipality is marked with a colour that corresponds to the quality class of the website of the state administration office operating on its territory. The colour system resulting from the four-colour theorem and the corresponding dual graph play the role of a reference system in relation to each empirical colour distribution and another dual graph related to it. The measure of the economic development of a region is the degree of reduction of the dual graph corresponding to the empirical distribution of colours, which identifies the actual growth poles and determines the routes of growth. The presented indicator better and more precisely identifies poles and routes of economic growth than the traditional location quotient.