REĢIONA KONKURĒTSPĒJAS UN ATTĪSTĪBAS ILGTSPĒJAS EKONOMISKO NOSACĪJUMU IZPĒTE

Scientific novelty of the paper is the analysis of interconnection of the regional competitiveness and development sustainability in the context of national identity and regional capability. For researching economical determinants of the competitiveness and sustainability authors used the resources approach based on the following methodological path: resources available in the region can be transformed into assets as a result of its activation, that, in turn, can give to region socially economic benefits, i.e., becomes a region capital. Usage of the resources-assets-capital approach can be found in different social sciences studies, sometimes revealing innovative resources or innovative forms of their activation and capitalization. The idea of this paper – economic determinants of the regional competitiveness and development sustainability are, firstly, resource availability in the region, and, secondly, ability of the regional agents to transform them into region’s capital. The authors assume that weak development of social technologies for activation and capitalization of resources is the most important reason for hindering the competitiveness and development sustainability of Latviaís regions. This hypothesis was proved in the framework of statistics available in Latvia by analyzing how much resources available in the regions are transformed into assets and further ñ into capital which provides benefits for the region. By using the case study method for analyzing problems of sapropelis resource’s of the lakes of Latgale region of Latvia activation and capitalization, authors proved that social technologies are significant for successful realization of material technologies and outlined the algorithm of social technologies for sapropelis resource activation and capitalization.