Vincenzo Vecchione

Preliminary investigation of the determinants of FDI distribution in Italy

The debate on the structural competitiveness of national and local productive systems has lately paid relevant attention to the territorial distribution of Foreign Direct Investment (FDI), since it can be perceived as an indicator of economic openness and integration in the world market. With regard to this, it can be observed that Italy has a strong potential for attracting investment, but the inward flow of FDI is very small with respect to what happens in other countries. This study analyses the factors determining this kind of mismatch with the aim of identifying appropriate policy suggestions to improve the strategies to attract foreign investors to Italy and, particularly, to its southern regions.

The Effect of Agricultural and Energy Prices on Biomass Production: The Case of Triticale in the OECD Area

Through the use of the econometric technique of panel data, this work mainly investigates the relationships between agricultural and energy prices and the land use for triticale, which is nowadays seen as one of the most important biomass crops. This is done with the aim of assessing the land use implications potentially associated to the existence of policies implementing forms of incentive for renewable energy production. The analysis is developed while considering 22 selected OECD countries observed over a period of 17 years, between 1995 and 2011. The analysis results suggest that the estimated functional shape of the land use for triticale mainly depends upon variations in the yield, producer and electricity prices. The policy implications, which might be derived from these findings, highlight how farmers would not be willing to substantially increase the area devoted to triticale unless the adoption of some forms of economic incentives to enhance bio-energy production is taken into consideration.

Limitations to assess the impact of rural development policy in the Puglia region: The case of measure 121 – Axes I

In this work, some specific aspects of the Rural Development Plan of the Puglia Region (in Southern Italy) for the period 2007-2013 are analyzed and the limitations characterizing the possibility of building an analysis framework aimed at understanding how it actually affects the regional agricultural system are highlighted. More specifically, by referring to a specific measure of the rural development program (Measure 121 of Axes I), the aim is to verify whether the investment activity implemented has actually generated some positive results which can induce us to say that the EU budget devoted to rural development is well spent. In order to achieve this purpose, the authors of the present work have worked at gathering all the information available at the Puglia Region Authority. Nevertheless, this is not helpful for the type of the analysis the authors would like to conduct. The observation of the gathered data, in fact, makes the authors observe the existence of severe limitations deriving from the way in which the Regional Authority manages the data collection. The main aim of this work is to present a framework of analysis which might be used for policy evaluation purposes and to discuss what should be further required for a useful completion of the dataset with the aim of making it the subject of empirical analyses.