CERUP 2018

Challenges in Evaluating Regional and Urban Policy

Department of Social Sciences and Economics, Sapienza, University of Rome

Department of Political Science, University Roma Tre

8-9 March 2018, Rome, Italy

Slow growth in less developed areas, often associated with either natural or economic shocks, has a strong social impact on well-being of individuals and communities. Inequality increases and some territories are left behind. Geography of discontent emerges, with social and political consequences. How cities and regions can develop in more continuous, equal and resilient ways and how “place-based” policies can support this pattern constitute an important research agenda for regional scientists.

However, evaluating regional policies after severe shocks is not straightforward: causality, endogeneity and spatial spillovers bias the estimate of the critical parameters while making more difficult our understanding of the policy effects. Researchers are exploring new methodological approach, pointing to robust and clear empirical answers to the policy questions related to the economic and social development of region and cities.

The Department of Social Sciences and Economics of Sapienza, University of Rome and the Department of Political Science of University Roma Tre, with the endorsement of AISRe, organize an international conference on the evaluation of public policies focusing on regional growth and resilience. The main focus of the conference is the methodological challenges on causal framework within the evaluation of economic and social regional policies.

The program will include keynote presentations from invited speakers. We are delighted to offer a pre-conference tutorial on the implementation of the most important approaches in program evaluation using R routines.

Both theoretical and applied contributions are welcomed on the following main topics: counterfactual evaluation methods, spatial econometric methods for impact evaluation, policies for urban and regional economic growth, policies for economic and social resilience.

We encourage scholars to submit full papers ( a complete draft, preliminary paper) about their original research by January 22nd, 2018 to cerup2018@gmail.com in order to present in a paper session.

Only for poster presentation, an abstract (maximum 600 words) must be submitted for review by January 22nd, 2018 to cerup2018@gmail.com

The abstract should be submitted as a word document and should include the title, the authors and describe: background, aim of the research, methodology, results, relevance to the conference theme. Guidelines for poster presentation can be found here.

Notification of acceptance will be sent by February 8th.

Young researchers (under 40 years) can apply for the Young Investigator Session.

Selected papers, which exhibit and justify significant innovations in the conference themes, will be considered for publication to a special issue of an international journal in regional studies.