Cultural and Creative Economy: Challenges and Opportunities for Romania

The main aim of our paper is to highlight the importance of creative and cultural economy (CCE) for Romania on its road towards a knowledge and innovation-based society. In order to express the accelerated importance of CCE for ranking countries performance based on the new competitiveness framework specific to this new type of economy and society, we apply some of the most relevant new benchmarking methodologies such as the Global Creativity Index, European Innovation Scoreboard, Cultural Employment Index and Beyond GDP. The authors identify some of the key drivers of competitiveness specific to these new benchmarking methods. We also include a comparative analysis between these methods. We also compare the different ranking positions of Romania according to these methods, on one hand, and the performance of the top five countries corresponding to each of the benchmarking tool. Special attention had been given to Romania both from a static and dynamic point of view considering its expected evolution and trends based on different dimensions of development (economic, social, cultural, environment) under the broader umbrella of CCE. For further research we intend to enlarge our perspective including an alternative mix of socio-economic-cultural and environmental policies that would contribute and make the difference for a long-run smart, sustainable and inclusive development at all the levels of activities (micro-, mezzo- and macroeconomics). We will also take into account the specific ways in which these interconnected policies are affected by the emergence of CCE.