Central European Business Review X:X | DOI: 10.18267/j.cebr.397

Funding Structure of Clusters from Post-Communist and Developed Countries

Peter Burger ORCID...¹, Eduard Baumöhl ORCID...²

¹ Technical University of Košice, Faculty of Economics, Department of Regional Sciences and Management, Němcovej 32, 042 00 Košice, Slovakia. Email: peter.burger@tuke.sk (corresponding author)

² University of Economics in Bratislava, Dolnozemská cesta 1, 852 35 Bratislava, Slovakia; Institute of Economic Research (EU SAV), Šancová 56, 811 05 Bratislava, Slovakia; Institute of Financial Complex Systems, Masaryk University, Lipová 41a, 602 00 Brno, Czech Republic. Email: eduard.baumohl@euba.sk

The paper compares the funding structure of European clusters. It uses a hand-collected questionnaire survey (n=185) to examine the budget structure of European clusters. This aimed to identify the differences between clusters in the post-communist and developed countries, as well as between clusters located in countries with higher and those with lower levels of innovation performance. The results show that clusters in (i) the post-communist countries and (ii) cluster from countries with lower levels of innovation performance have a much higher share of EU Structural Funds and Community Programmes in their budgets than clusters in (iii) developed countries and (iv) clusters in countries with higher levels of innovation performance. The latter two groups of countries exhibit a predominantly higher share of funding from National, Regional and Local subsidies and grants. These are sources to which other European clusters frequently do not have sufficient access. Moreover, the results indicate that there is not a relationship between cluster budgets and their sectoral classification.
Implications for the Central European audience: The issue of clusters, cluster policies, and their support and financing has been topical since the 1990s, especially in Western and Northern Europe and North America, as well as in developed Asian countries. In Central Europe, the penetration of clusters as an effective instrument of regional but also innovation policy has been slower, although there are also considerable differences in the implementation and support of cluster policies among Central European countries, with the most problematic situation among the V4 countries being in Slovakia. Throughout the self-administered questionnaire survey, in which responses from V4 clusters are among the most represented, we compare the structure of European cluster budgets, highlighting the differences in cluster funding between the different country groups.

Keywords: clusters; cluster policies; financing clusters; public, private sources; financial structure

Received: September 30, 2024; Revised: December 3, 2024; Accepted: December 17, 2024; Prepublished online: April 13, 2025