Universities' potential to contribute to regional value creation has been extensively discussed so far and significant literature has been devoted to celebrated cases in highly industrialized and developed countries. Assuming that it would be misleading to generalize from “exceptional” cases, some authors have focused their attention specifically on the influence of universities in less developed areas regions and countries, where university–industry relations are far from being a Triple Helix. This paper focuses on the mechanisms of university–industry knowledge transfer (KT) in Romania, a post-communist country with relatively weak regional innovation performances, except for the capital region Bucharest-Ilfov. The purpose of the study is to construct an index to compare university–industry KT across the eight Romanian regions. Data to be aggregated are collected from 90 Romanian higher education institutions and refer to their KT potential in terms of human, financial and relational inputs, outputs and outcomes (patent applications, new products and services, spin-offs and commercial income). Finally, universities' regional KT performances are compared to small and medium enterprises territorial patterns and issuing policy implications are discussed.

In the transition and developing countries the use of surplus real property might be a good response to the acute need for local sources of revenues provided the requirements of the new public management regarding efficiency, effectiveness and quality of public services are carefully observed. The research has focused on the case of Romanian cities' real properties, aiming to reveal the problems of the existing municipal real property (MRP) management system in relation to both overall city conditions and the characteristics of the institutional and organizational framework. A questionnaire-based survey followed by nonparametric statistical tests have been employed in this respect, confirming the working hypothesis which points to the importance of the existence of an MRP plan, an MRP strategy and an MRP unit at municipality level for the effective use of these assets. A series of viable solutions to the problems identified have been also formulated. Points for practitioners: The article emphasizes the decisive role of the strategic approach and corresponding instruments for effective MRP management, putting forward valuable recommendations for making MRP an important source of revenue for municipal governments. They are derived from the findings obtained within the EU-funded project entitled ‘Municipal Property Management in South-East European Cities’ (PROMISE) by the Bucharest University of Economic Studies team, one of the 13 partners involved. Its contribution has been nominated by the International Project Management Association among the five finalists of the Achievement Award global competition, category Community Service/Development Project 2013.

For many regional economies tourism can offer effective solutions to the question of regional competitiveness. As a niche market, cultural tourism responds at present to a growing demand, more and more travellers ranking arts, heritage and other cultural activities as one of the main reasons of travelling. This paper proposes a case study in Romania, which discusses the current state and the perspectives of cultural tourism development at national and regional level. A special emphasis will be put on the possibility to correlate the policy measures supporting tourism development with those addressing the creation of a competitive specialisation profile, infrastructure improvement, sustainability, institutional capacity building, financial management and control so as to contribute to economic recovery and reducing intra and interregional disparities.