Measuring regional sustainability in the EU: Developing and applying adjusted HDI variants with functional data analysis

Antonín Hořčica
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Antonín Hořčica: Faculty of Economics, University of South Bohemia in České Budějovice

No 2026-02, Economics Working Papers from University of South Bohemia in Ceske Budejovice, Faculty of Economics

Abstract: Addressing the gap in regional sustainability monitoring in the EU, this study assesses the applicability of composite sustainability indicator families at the NUTS 2 level and de-velops a methodology for regional variants of the Human Development Index (HDI) family. Nine indicator families were systematically assessed against four applicability criteria: communicability, relationship to GDP, sustainability dimension coverage, and territorial applicability. The HDI family emerged as the only methodologically sound basis for the NUTS 2 sustainability assessments. Four regional indices (R-HDI, R-IHDI, R-GDI, and the planetary pressures-adjusted R-PHDI) were derived from Eurostat and EDGAR data and piloted on 84 NUTS 2 regions across six Central European countries (V4, Germany, Austria) for 2000-2024. Functional data analysis with global envelope tests confirmed that conclu-sions about convergence depend on indicator choice: statistically significant V4 vs DE+AT differences under R-HDI (p = 0,001) disappeared following environmental adjustment via R-PHDI (p = 0,487), with emission-intensive regions substantially penalised. The R-IHDI and R-GDI required methodological compromises owing to the absence of microdata at the NUTS 2 level. This study presents the first systematic derivation and empirical application of the full HDI family at EU NUTS 2 level.

Keywords: sustainability indicators; NUTS regions; Human Development Index; functional data analy-sis; European Union; regional development (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C14 Q01 R11 R58 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 76 pages
Date: 2026-05-12, Revised 2026-05-13
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:boh:wpaper:02_2026

DOI: 10.32725/ewp.2026.002

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