Regional analysis using self-organizing maps

Exploratory analysis of financial and economic data is being accepted as a very valuable and important stage of solving of majority of financial and economic tasks. We introduce a short overview of neural network approaches and applications in the financial and economic domain. Self-organizing map (SOM) used provides a unique and integrating neural network approach for proper and effective initial analysis of multidimensional financial and economic data. We provide a brief sketch of the basic types of analysis by means of SOM and illustrate their use on analysis of Slovak regions in terms of their budget income and expenditure data.

Keywords: income, neural networks, self-organizing maps, finance, regional analysis, tax, expenditure