CHAPTER 5 REGIONAL AID TO COMPANIES: A PROPOSAL FOR ADDITIONAL EVALUATION CRITERIA Annamaria Fiore,1 Gianna Elisa Berlingerio,2 Antonella Costanza 3 1
Regional Technology and Innovation Agency, a.fiore@arti.puglia.it 2 Apulia Region, ge.berlingerio@regione.puglia.it 3 Apulia Region, a.costanza@regione.puglia.it
Within EU policy development, evidence-based policy making has become more and more important, resulting in a greater attention to measuring the policy impact. During the current programming period (2014-2020), there has been a focus on monitoring the impact of projects funded by the EU for enterprise investments. More informed policies require more accurate data. In this chapter we propose new indicators to monitor the impact of EU funding for enterprise investments. In this context Apulia Region’s Administration, through its Section for Competitiveness and Research of the Production Systems, asked the Regional Strategic Agency for Technology and Innovation (ARTI) to identify a wider set of indicators for evaluating the impact of business aid on regional territories. These criteria could potentially trigger a more virtuous entrepreneurial behaviour from the medium to the long run. The main purpose of this chapter is to contribute to improve the quality of public spending and investment support by proposing a set of criteria and indicators for selecting and evaluating investment projects proposed by Apulian companies. In addition to criteria currently in use, the proposed criteria are useful for assessing the overall impact of aid on the regional territory, identified along five macro-categories of indicators: Attractiveness, Supply chain vision, Human capital and workers’ well-being, Innovation, and Circular economy. For each of these categories, we suggest several indicators measured from the start of the investment project and up to the end of the implementation phase. The authors detected adequate indicators and categorized them into five dimensions based on the Regional Operational Programme, the Industry 4.0 paradigm, the Regional Competitiveness Index, externalities connected to the Societal Challenges, and an explorative analysis of the data about regional aid to companies in the previous programming period (2007-2013). ΑΒSTRACT
Annamaria Fiore, Gianna Elisa Berlingerio, Antonella Costanza
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