Intro
Regional development and regional resilience, often described as the capacity of a region to for example bounce back in terms of employment after a crisis (see for example have often been described in economic terms, using economic indicators such as growth in GDP or demographic indicators such as net migration or employment.
Some researchers argued that regional development should be understood broader, by including for example social indicators and living environment indicators . In addition, in recent years researchers have shown that policies directed towards regional development have broadened as well , but are also still evaluated within specific narratives or frameworks that often constitute the goals of the policy, for example the Keynesian framework favours increasing demand and favoursthe evaluation of policies aimed at exactly this .
By using the broader framework from Pike in combination with sifting through numerous data sources from EUROSTAT and OECD, researchers in the PREMIUM_EU project developed a new framework that is measuring Regional Development using 15 economic, 13 social and 5 living environment indicators.
This new innovative interpretation of Regional Development also opens up discussions on the efficiency of developed implemented and evaluated public policies.
Method
By regarding regional development (and individual indicators) as an outcome of public policies on the local, regional, national and international level and by analysing regional development policies on different levels from 2010 and onwards we believe it is possible to understand the impact of these policies in a more evidenced based sense, regardless of the above mentioned different types of narratives or frameworks.
We started our research with an analysis from the OECD on the different types of regional development policies and the relations between different levels of government within countries. Based on this and literature research, we developed a framework with relevant topics for regional development policies and different levels of government.
Based on the work of Moritz Schütz presented during the ERSA 2024 conference, we developed and employed an webcrawler to automatically download and analyse policies and also manually tested the results of this exercise.
Findings/results
The webmining exercise in combination with the new set of indicators will offer a much broader and more comprehensive view of the use and necessity of regional development policies. The findings will be discussed in dedicated policy labs with policymakers and researchers from the respective regions.
Discussion/conclusions
Both the new set of indicators and the analysis of the policies are not only innovative, but will also be viewed as speculative. Although we believe that a direct causal relationship between policies and the regional development will be hard to uncover, we do believe that this research will move the field of policy analysis forward, because it is more focused on evidence-based indicators and is based on larger sets of policies.
How can European migration, between countries and within countries between regions, contribute to the development of vulnerable regions in Europe? This is the central question of project Premium_EU (Policy REcommendations to Maximise the beneficial Impact of Unexplored Mobilities in and beyond the European Union), which is financed by Horizon Europe.The key goal of Premium_EU is the development of a Regional Policy Dashboard for national and regional policy makers to help them in the formulation of new policies aimed at the potential of migration to enhance the development of vulnerable regions. The Dashboard combines all available knowledge of three domains in three modules: the Mobility Module, the Regional Development Effects Module, and the Policy Module.The Mobility Module includes both past trends and projections and scenarios, in addition to new mobility estimates based on data from social media usage, such as LinkedIn and Facebook. The module also includes qualitative information from case studies on specific types of mobility groups, such as Polish seasonal workers, or Turkish migrants to EU countries. These trends, projections and case studies will be summarized in a regional typology on the basis of the mobility profile of the region.In the Regional Development Effects Module all available data on regional development is summarized in a regional development typology, where regional development is interpreted much broader than economic development. Using causal models the role of regional mobility in regional development will be established.In the Policy Module all possible forms of regional policies will be collected and linked to the mobility- and regional development characteristics of the region.The Dashboard integrates these modules so that a policy maker, on the basis of the unique mobility and regional development profile of his or her region is able to make an evidence based choice out of a relevant set of policy options. Users of the Dashboard will also be able to add their experiences to the Dashboard, so that other users can benefit from their knowledge.
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