Over the years a number of Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) reforms have led to the emergence of a CAP chapter specifically dedicated to rural development, also referred as Pillar 2, and have resulted in a progressive switch of CAP budget from Pillar 1 (i.e. direct support to farmers, including direct payments and other instruments for market regulation) to Pillar 2. Approximately 23 per cent of the CAP should be allocated to rural development measures during the period 2014-2020. The recent development of Pillar 2 calls for further research on the impact assessment of such policies. Unfortunately, the diversity of rural situations across Europe has complicated the empirical studies of the impacts of rural development and often makes any comparison between regions rather trivial. The main objective of TASK 1 is the creation of a classification of 1303 NUTS3 regions, which reflects the heterogeneity of NUTS3 characteristics in the EU. This classification will be multidimensional. In particular, the typology will be based on the following set of four criteria: Rural Character, Accessibility, Actual economic diversification and Total Gross Domestic Product per capita. Such classification will facilitate the comparison of rural development policy impacts between regions of interest across Europe. In the report we consider three different approaches, i.e. traditional cluster analysis, latent class models and multiple cluster structures. All approaches are presented in Section 2 with a description of their underlying assumptions and specific features. Then, Section 3 assesses the adequateness of each approach with respect to the data used for the analysis. Section 4 examines the results for each approach and some concluding remarks are provided in Section 5.
A classification of European NUTS3 regions
RAGGI, MERI;
2013
Abstract
Over the years a number of Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) reforms have led to the emergence of a CAP chapter specifically dedicated to rural development, also referred as Pillar 2, and have resulted in a progressive switch of CAP budget from Pillar 1 (i.e. direct support to farmers, including direct payments and other instruments for market regulation) to Pillar 2. Approximately 23 per cent of the CAP should be allocated to rural development measures during the period 2014-2020. The recent development of Pillar 2 calls for further research on the impact assessment of such policies. Unfortunately, the diversity of rural situations across Europe has complicated the empirical studies of the impacts of rural development and often makes any comparison between regions rather trivial. The main objective of TASK 1 is the creation of a classification of 1303 NUTS3 regions, which reflects the heterogeneity of NUTS3 characteristics in the EU. This classification will be multidimensional. In particular, the typology will be based on the following set of four criteria: Rural Character, Accessibility, Actual economic diversification and Total Gross Domestic Product per capita. Such classification will facilitate the comparison of rural development policy impacts between regions of interest across Europe. In the report we consider three different approaches, i.e. traditional cluster analysis, latent class models and multiple cluster structures. All approaches are presented in Section 2 with a description of their underlying assumptions and specific features. Then, Section 3 assesses the adequateness of each approach with respect to the data used for the analysis. Section 4 examines the results for each approach and some concluding remarks are provided in Section 5.I documenti in IRIS sono protetti da copyright e tutti i diritti sono riservati, salvo diversa indicazione.
