Although representing less than 20% of total CAP expenditure, the Rural Development Policy (RDP) 2007-2013 is supposed to support rural areas which are facing new challenges. Currently, many EU rural areas are experiencing major trans- formations and the traditional urban-rural divide seems...

The Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) is the most important EU Policy in terms of total expenditure. Nevertheless, its impact on EU-27 regions is rather uneven: actually, some regions have historically received a larger support than others. Territorial imbalances, however, represent only part of...

This paper presents a preliminary evaluation of the 21 Rural Development Programs (RDPs) of the Italian regions and Autonomous provinces. A quantitative analysis of the Italian RDPs will be carried out investigating the distribution of the European Agricultural Funds for Rural Development,...

Agent-based models (AMB) allow to conceive social systems as the result of individually-acting agents. When they are applied to agriculture, they can simulate the fundamental behaviour at the micro-level of the individual farmers, without the need of aggregating them in “representative”...

The aim of the paper is twofold: to present a preliminary analysis of the distribution of the Rural Development (RD) expenditure for specific measures related to human capital across EU and to investigate which factors may explain the variation of intensity of spending between the regions. In...

Several progresses have been made in evaluating the development policies for rural areas in the last years; many indicators1 have been set for assessing the effectiveness of Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) and Rural Development Policies (RDPs) and their role on the convergence process of the EU...

The aim of this paper is to suggest the adoption of an "evidence based" approach in the analysis of CAP expenditure. The debate on CAP expenditure is generally based on ex-ante images of the budget as presented in the Multiannual Financial Framework and, before each financial year, on the budget...

The AGMEMOD Partnership seeks to capture the inherent existingheterogeneity of agricultural systems by linking together individualEU Member State models, an aggregated EU model and severalaccession countries into one single model, while still maintaininganalytical consistency. Although this...

This paper aims at analysing the recent CAP reform from the perspective of the current general and strategic objectives of the EU as defined by the Lisbon Strategy. A critical appraisal of the CAP impact in terms of regional growth is carried out. Firstly from a strictly conceptual and...

This work analyzes farm diversification activities in an Italian region (Marche). The study examines 387 farms from Farm Accountancy Data Network (FADN) over a six-year period (2000-2005), applying Discrete Choice Models to identify their business. Recognizing the driving forces of such...