Analysis of Regional Disparities in Agriculture Focusing on Economically Weak Regions of the Czech Republic

Abstract The objective of this study is to identify the regions of the Czech Republic with the economically non-effective agriculture industry. The methodology is based on an orginal approach as the economically weak regions are identified on the LAU 1 level, comparing to the existing studies using only NUTS III level. The input data describe the economic results of 6,031 agricultural entities from 75 different regions LAU 1. The data covering the period between 2006 and 2014 were gained from the database Amadeus. The study deploys the methods of Principal Component Analysis, Kaiser-Meier-Olkin test, Bartlett’s test and hierarchical cluster analysis. The study determinates two key components: the Company Size and the Company Profit. These key components are used as the input variables for the cluster analysis. The cluster analysis identifies four clusters of regions from the agricultural entities economical results point of view. Subsequently the Standardized Variable Method is used to determinate the mutual order of the regions. The results of LAU 1 regions analyses show that the agrucultural entities, located in the border regions, reach economical results below average of the Czech Republic regions.