Spatial Autocorrelation in Assessment of Financial Self-Sufficiency of Communes of Wielkopolska Province

The aim of the article was to identify the spatial effects in assessment of financial self-sufficiency of the governments of communes (gminas) of Wielkopolska province (voivodship) in 2014, employing global and local Moran I statistics. The level of the governments’ self-sufficiency was examined by positional TOPSIS method. The study was based on publicly accessible databases compiled by the Ministry of Finance (Wskaźniki do oceny sytuacji finansowej jednostek samorządu terytorialnego) and the Central Statistical Office (Local Data Bank). Calculations were performed in R with packages spdep, maptools and shapefiles. The study demonstrated that the communes of Wielkopolska province of comparable levels of financial self-sufficiency exhibited a moderate tendency to cluster. Clusters of high levels gathered around larger urban centres, especially around Poznań, while clusters of low levels – in economically underdeveloped agricultural south-eastern and northern part of the province.