TERA (Territorial Aspects of Enterprise Development in Remote Rural Areas)

Project main goals: 1. Identifying and analysing the main economic factors which influence the creation and survival of enterprises in European peripheral rural areas and measuring the degree of their influence, with appropriate empirical methodologies. We think that territorial economic factors (labour pooling, backward linkages, forward linkages and the development of infrastructures) and growth promoting factors (state of human capital and the degree of technical knowledge) provide the main determinants for the creation and survival of enterprises in rural areas. 2. Assessing the extent to which current and recent EU, national and regional development policies, programmes and projects take account of these “territorial” factors. This appraisal would concern itself in particular with parallel support policies such as CAP direct payments and national social welfare support systems. We will compare the weight of these factors, as measured by our empirical results, with the effective relevance they have (if any) in the actual policies. 3. Specifying new policy interventions which can better promote the development of European remote rural areas. The design of these policies would embody those elements of the previous “territorial” analysis most useful for achieving the final goal. The objectives of the proposed project will be fulfilled through the execution of the following 8 project work-packages: 1) Identification of the relevant study areas / Studies of Regional characteristics; 2) Conceptualisation of geographical and economic patterns; 3) Model design (CGE and job reallocation macroeconomic models) 4) Data collection 5) Model calibration, analysis and results. Macro-econometric analysis; 6) Appraisal of current structural development policies 7) Policy implications and recommendations 8) Synthesis and evaluation