A NUTS2 View of Regional Inequality in Croatia, 1968–2008

Croatia is a small economy. This is true both with respect to its GDP (pre-recession, 2008 GDP was €47.4 billion, only 25% of almost equally populated Finland), population (with 4.4 million inhabitants according to the 2011 population census, it is approximately the size of metropolitan Milan or St Petersburg) and area (with an area of 56,542 square kilometres, it is slightly below the size of Lake Michigan). Furthermore, it is sparsely populated (with 81 persons per square kilometre, it is at 72% of the EU average) and ranked as an upper middle-income economy (with US$17,336 per capita in PPP in 2008, it is 65% higher than the World Bank average for this income group and ranks 64th on the World Bank GDP per capita PPP ranking). With regard to its population the whole country could easily be one NUTS2 region (out of 271 NUTS2 regions in the EU27, 13 have a larger population and 79 a larger GDP).