Structural funds and sustainable development the SQM approach

The question of how to achieve greater levels of sustainable development is intrinsically linked with the discussion concerning new forms of governance. Structural funds have become most influential in promoting sustainable development and appropriate forms of governance across the EU. They have been very important in introducing new innovative forms of co‐ordination in many countries and have encouraged the mobilization of new political actors. Structural Funds can be considered as a most interesting laboratory for the development of new governance patterns, which are urgently needed for coping with accelerated change and increasing complexity. Multi‐level governance in the spirit of subsidiarity will not be possible without flexible objective‐oriented management approaches instead of the rigid attribution of competences. This requires new conceptual approaches, procedures, and instruments. ‘SQM—Sustainable Quality Management®’ is a coherent system for the conception, support, monitoring and evaluation of sustainable development processes. A series of pilot projects in the last five years have shown its potential and utility. The SQM system includes concepts, methods and operational tools that have proved to be applicable and comprehensible in different European cultures. Internet‐based SQM software tools support every step in the policy cycle. Sustainable development is conceived as an overarching principle that governs the management of processes and covers all policy principles postulated by the EU. In the use of a common framework over the whole policy cycle and the coherent implementation of basic principles there is the promise of achieving better orientation towards sustainable development and considerable efficiency gains.     

Family dissolution and precautionary savings: an empirical analysis

The main research question of this paper is whether or not the risk of family disruption has an impact on the consumption/saving decisions of households. Although little empirical work exists in this area, often presenting indirect evidence, the theory is divided over the effect of family risk over saving and wealth accumulation. By using data from the Italian Survey on Households Income and Wealth, we build a probabilistic model to assess the probability of marital splitting, and then we insert this probability as a distinct or interacted regressor, in a statistically consistent way, into a linear model of consumption. Furthermore, we study the differential behaviour, in terms of consumption/saving choices, of couples experiencing marital splitting over the subsequent 2?years. The main result of our analysis is that family disruption risk generates precautionary savings, reducing current consumption. In fact, according to our estimates, on average, the risk of divorce generates an amount of additional yearly precautionary savings of around 800 euros at constant prices of the year 2000, which represents 11% of overall household savings.     

Tools for evaluating EU agricultural policies: An integrated approach

The aim of this paper is to propose a theoretical “multi-phase” strategy for analysing in dynamic terms the territorial impact of agricultural and environmental EU policy measures. This approach should also allow to evaluate the adjustment capability of farms as a function of the characteristics of different territories. The proposed methodology is illustrated by an example using data relative to the 41 provinces of Northern Italy. In the first step, a multivariate statistical analysis (MSA) consisting in Principal Component Analysis and Cluster Analysis leads to the identification of homogeneous clusters of territorial units. The territorial mapping is conditional to a predetermined set of indicators that takes into account different aspects of agricultural development. In a second step, Positive Mathematical Programming (PMP) allows to introduce the impact of agricultural policies (compensatory payments, price changes, etc.) returning different scenarios of land use and agricultural profitability. According to the outputs of the PMP, the third step consists in a new MSA for detecting any changes in the territorial mapping. Convergence analysis can then synthesise the impact of the different policy options.