LIBRI DI PATRIZIA LATTARULO

The XLII AISRe Conference called the Italian community of regional and urban scientists to debate on the long-term consequences, issues and challenges imposed by the coronavirus global emergency. In a world already characterized by increasing social inequalities, the pandemic is likely to exacerbate the rise of disparities. Limited mobility, the restricted access to public services such as schools and hospitals, and the higher uncertainty generated by the healthcare emergency hit more severely those individuals in a condition of relative economic, occupational, and educational disadvantage.

L’Europa è oggi attraversata da una forte domanda di autonomia da parte dei territori: da un lato, a tutela dell’identità delle comunità locali e, dall’altro, per la crescente rivendicazione di una più ampia rappresentanza delle cittadinanze. Il volume raccoglie i contributi presentati alla XXXIX Conferenza Italiana di Scienze Regionali, svoltasi a Bolzano il 17, 18 e 19 settembre 2018. Analizza il tema della domanda di autonomia da parte dei territori all’interno dello sviluppo economico e sociale di regioni e paesi, estendendo la riflessione alla crescente disparità tra aree centrali e aree periferiche, tra Nord e Sud dei Paesi e dell’Europa.

The aim of the paper is to explain what are the determinants of Tuscan municipalities’ absorption capacity of European Structural Funds. For this purpose we use a hurdle model which consists of two parts. Firstly, a binary logistic model is used to estimate the probability that a municipality gets at least one project financed with EU structural funds. Secondly, a regression with negative binomial distribution is estimated only for municipalities with at least one project financed, in order to identify the determinants of the number of projects. The results show that the probability of access to at least one European project is mainly influenced by three factors: the demographic size of the municipality, the experience in previous programming cycles and by the geographic area. When it comes to the determinants of the number of projects financed (for those municipalities which got at least one project financed), other factors play an important role. One of these is the adequacy of civil servants both in terms of size and quality, the latter measured by the incidence of graduated civil servants in the municipality. Also economic and financial factors impact on the number of projects financed at the municipality level: the amount of revenues has a positive effect while the presence of deficit and Internal Stability Pact constraints seem to have a negative impact. Even political stability finally appears to have a positive role in the municipality absorption capacity of Structural Funds.

The purpose of the paper is to assess the impact of the Regional Mobility and Logistic Plan (RMLP) of Tuscany on regional growth and spatial disparities between the Tuscan provinces. In order to evaluate its economic impact, we first quantify the impact in terms of changes in travel time and variations in the cost of transportation per unit of delivered output. We then make use of the Remi-Irpet model. The latter explains the agglomeration economies and productivity differentials. We find that, despite the fact that the RMLP does not solve the structural problem of mobility within Tuscany, it does make it possible to get rid of some potential constraints for long-term regional growth, even if the economic impact across the provinces is disequalizing.

Il IX Rapporto sulla Finanza Territoriale offre una panoramica aggiornata sulla difficile e contraddittoria fase che stanno vivendo le istituzioni decentrate del Paese. Dopo una lettura della complessa fase di transizione tra diversi modelli di finanziamento e gestione della cosa pubblica, il testo dà rilievo ad approfondimenti tematici sulle politiche messe in opera dalle Regioni per utilizzare meglio le proprie risorse e quelle comunitarie.