The 2nd Preparatory Action on Smart Rural Areas in the 21st Century (Smart Rural 27 project) was launched by the European Commission on 21 December 2020 with the aim to "prepare Member States and rural communities to the implementation of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) post-2020 as well as...

The purpose of the 'Support for Smart Villages in the CAP Strategic Plans' report carried out in the framework of the 2nd Preparatory Action - Smart areas in the 21th century - is to provide an overview on how Smart Villages concept has been programmed in the 2023-2027 CAP Strategic Plans (CAP...

The Preparatory Action on Smart Rural Areas in the 21st Century (Bis), was running from December 2020 to May 2024 and aimed to prepare Member States and rural communities for the implementation of Smart Villages within the Common Agricultural Policy post-2020, as well as other EU policies which...

Smart Villages is a relatively new concept that was first formulated by the European Commission - at the initiation of the European Parliament through the EU Action for Smart Villages in 2017. The 1st Preparatory Action on Smart Rural Areas in the 21st Century (called Smart Rural 21 project,...

While agriculture remains a key source of livelihoods in rural Africa, employment in other economic sectors is gaining in importance. However, details of the labor conditions are under-researched. Here, we examine labor conditions in different sectors of the rural economy using survey data from...

We examine the impact of rural road connectivity on economic and social outcomes in the context of India’s PMGSY, the world’s largest rural road program. Using a novel village-level survey explicitly designed around PMGSY’s rollout, we exploit quasi-random variation in road placement to...