Projects

The project involved research on the future of regional policy in an enlarged European Union to include countries from Central and Eastern Europe. Initially drafted as a briefing paper for an informal discussion sponsored by Scotland House in September 2000 in Brussels, the research paper was subsequently revised in the light of the discussion.

The project involved identification of good and distinctive evaluation practices with the potential to contribute to the development of the 2000-06 Scottish Executive Structural Funds evaluation framework. The project reviewed evaluation practices and methodological choices across the EU-15 to derive best practice recommendations relevant to the Scottish context

The project involved case study research to review selected international experience with the outsourcing of programme management functions. It had four aims: (i) to summarise trends in institutional and operational arrangements for Structural Fund administration, identifying the degree to which outsourcing existed; (ii) to identify a typology to describe the forms of outsourcing used in different Member States; (iii) to examine the impact and implications of oursourcing on different stages and tasks of programming; and (iv) to provide an overall assessment of experience and lessons arising from different outsourcing options. Drawing on international experience, the study concluded by distilling the relative benefits and disadvantages of outsourcing in different contexts, and identified a series of best practice lessons for the design and implementation of such solutions.

The project involved a scoping study in preparation for a wider-ranging research project funded by the Greek government. The scoping study focused on two areas: (i) documenting the scale and scope of statistical sources of information relating to the economic and social situation of the countries of Central and Eastern Europe (CEE). (ii) providing an overview of the range and broad content of research literature in this field, looking particularly at the impact of the CEE countries to the European Union.

The project comprised an interim evaluation of the process and stage of implementation of the Baltic Sea INTERREG IIC programme as well as an initial assessment of the programme's effects. The indicators identified to monitor the programme and its components were also reviewed.

The project involved a synthesis and assessment of the achievements, experiences and lessons of Objective 2 interventions in the period 1989-99, drawing out practical recommendations for the 2000-06 programming period. The study took a horizontal perspective, examining commonalities and contrasts between Member States and regions, and a longitudinal view, identifying progressive changes across three programming periods (1989-93, 1994-96 and 1997-99). Research included: an overview of Objective 2 programme implementation; a country-by-country review of Structural Fund organisation and practices; the content of Objective strategies, the origins and application of the horizontal themes of employment creation, RTDI, environmental integration and gender mainstreaming; and, monitoring and evaluation.

This project involved research for a 'meta-evaluation’ of the Structural Funds in the Nordic countries led by Nordregio. EPRC research examined commonalities and contrasts between Nordic regional policy and EU regional policy, highlighting the impact of EU regional policy, and in particular the Structural Funds.

The project involved an assessment of trends in tourism policy across the EU and experience and practice with respect to the evaluation of tourism strategies. The approach of other Objective 2 programmes in selected EU countries was also examined to identify the sophistication of their tourism measures and evaluation indicators.

This research contributed to the preparations for the 2000-06 Lower Austrian Objective 2 programme. In conjunction with inno (Karlsruhe, Germany), the research provided strategic analysis and proposed measures for one component of the programme as well as benchmarking the new programme in the context of wider European experience and taking new Commission guidelines into account.

Funded by an ESRC award, the project aimed to compare the role of multinational investors in influencing the internationalisation activities of local Scottish suppliers in the electronics and the oil-gas industries. As industries with high shares of FDI and exporting, research examined whether investors have supported the efforts of local suppliers to develop export markets. Based on a fieldwork survey of investors and suppliers in both industries, the study concluded that investors could provide significant assistance by helping their suppliers to 'piggy-back' into new markets, but the scale of this was highly dependent on industry factors. Such benefits from FDI were considerably more prevalent in the Scottish oil-gas than the electronics industry.