Abstract:

A short decade ago when Greece was in great financial difficulties the idea was brought up to sell part of the country, predominantly islands to potential investors to alleviate the budgetary problems. And throughout history regions and part of countries were sold and bought between emperors, kings and other rulers. At what price?
For economists and social scientists this is a challenging question. We are used to describe countries and regions by various indicators of economic and social wellbeing but how to give a one-dimensional figure? This paper will make an attempt to find a method for giving regions a one-dimensional economic value in terms of the price of an asset (besides describing them with the above alluded variety of indicators). It will take the nine provinces of Austria as case study for such an approach and to find an answer to the thought experiment as to their price in case one of them has to be sold. It will treat these regions as potential investments on a capital market and apply the economics of credit and discounting to each of them.
In doing so it will describe various indicators influencing their economic value and point also to the role of their major cities for their attractiveness for potential investors. Thus it will touch the balance of centers and peripheries as an important variable for the resulting price. It will also point to importance of R&D, highly present in these agglomerations, for the final outcome.
It will apply a well-known economic method to find a price and to compare them as to their attractiveness for a fictitious bid of potential investors. The resulting prices will be presented and compared to each other. Finally the outcomes, their comparability and applicability will be discussed.

Keywords:

Regional and urban economics, regions as assets, cities and R&amp, D as asset influencing variables, discounting approach.