Financing the endogenous development at regional and county levels. Particularities, trends and challenges

The paper focuses on the complex dialectics between endogenous and exogenous components of local and territorial economic development, emphasizing the idea of the particular consistency of internal growth factors and the importance, in this context, of financial means for activating the endogenous potential in the case of Romania. The county was considered as statistical observation unit for the period of analysis 2007-2013 and the data were disaggregated on bank loans, FDI, research and development expenditures, European structural and cohesion funds, local budgets expenditures. It was found that the more developed counties have better chances to achieve higher performances of endogenous development. The study highlighted the need of a policy mix that would support the development of counties with a relatively low development level, actually most of them, under the circumstances of a polycentric regional development. An optimal combination between top-down and bottom-up interventions may prove to be the most successful, offering an effective compatibility of decentralization with the coordination and monitoring requirements, supporting the smart specialization at county level, not excluding spillover effects at community and national levels.