Supporting Agro-food Enterprises in Piedmont: A Counterfactual Analysis

Journal title SCIENZE REGIONALI
Author/s Sara Pavone, Elena Ragazzi, Lisa Sella
Publishing Year 2015 Issue 2015/3 Suppl.
Language Italian Pages 15 P. 129-143 File size 233 KB
DOI 10.3280/SCRE2015-S03007
DOI is like a bar code for intellectual property: to have more infomation click here

Below, you can see the article first page

If you want to buy this article in PDF format, you can do it, following the instructions to buy download credits

Article preview

FrancoAngeli is member of Publishers International Linking Association, Inc (PILA), a not-for-profit association which run the CrossRef service enabling links to and from online scholarly content.

This paper aims at analysing the role played by the Rural Development Programme in supporting the agro-food industry in Piedmont (Italy). This is a first attempt to design an ex-post quasi experimental counterfactual evaluation of the net impact of the subsidy. The counterfactual has been selected by adopting the Coarsened Exact Matching technique, a quite recent imbalance-reducing matching method. Final results suggest a stabilizing effect of the subsidy in a period characterized by a sever worldwide economic crisis. Furthermore, this exercise shows that the matching technique, the chosen timing, and the quality of the available data do strongly influence the impact analysis.

Keywords: Policy evaluation; agro-food industry; counterfactual analysis; coarsened exact matching

Jel codes: L78; O25; D04; C4

  1. Bezlepkina I., Oude Lansink A., Oskam A., 2005, «Effects of Subsidies in Russian Dairy Framing». Agricultural Economics, 33, 3: 277-288. DOI: 10.1111/j.1574-0864.2005.00067.x
  2. Adelman M.A., 1955, «Concept and Statistical Measurement of Vertical Integration ». In: Business Concentration and Price Policy. Princeton: U.P., 281-330.
  3. Alston J.M., James J.S., 2002, «The Incidence of Agricultural Policy». In: Gardner B.L., Rausser G.C. (eds.), Handbook of Agricultural Economics. Filadelfia: Elsevier, 1689-1749.
  4. Bakucs L., Latruffe L., Ferto I., Fogarasi J., 2007, Technical Efficiency of Hungarian Farms Before and After Accession. Portoroz, Slovenia: Paper presented at the Chinese Economist Society (ces) Europe Conference «Economic Transition at Midlife: Lessons from the Development of Markets and Institutions », 11-13 May.
  5. Bergström F., 2000, «Capital Subsidies and the Performance of Firms». Small Business Economics, 14, 3: 183-193. DOI: 10.1023/A:1008133217594
  6. Blackwell M., Iacus S.M., King G., Porro G., 2009, «cem: Coarsened Exact Matching in Stata». The Stata Journal, 9, 4: 524-546.
  7. Bojnec Š., Latruffe L., 2013, «Farm Size, Agricultural Subsidies and Farm Performance in Slovenia». Land Use Policy, 32: 207-217. DOI: 10.1016/j.landusepol.2012.09.016
  8. Calabrese G., 2008, Dalle best performance alle best practice nelle imprese manifatturiere piemontesi. Torino: Regione Piemonte.
  9. Cerulli G., 2010, «Modelling and Measuring the Effect of Public Subsidies on Business r&d: A Critical Review of the Econometric Literature». Economic Record, 86, 274: pp. 421-449. DOI: 10.1111/j.1475-4932.2009.00615.x
  10. Czarnitzki D., Lopes-Bento C., 2013, «Value for Money? New Microeconometric Evidence on Public r&d Grants in Flanders». Research Policy, 42, pp. 76-89. DOI: 10.1016/j.respol.2012.04.008
  11. Galanopoulos K., Abas Z., Laga V., Hatziminaoglou I., Boyazoglu J., 2011, «The Technical Efficiency of Transhumance Sheep and Goat Farms and the Effect of eu Subsidies: Do Small Farms Benefit More than Large Farms?». Small Ruminant Research, 100, 1: 1-7. DOI: 10.1016/j.smallrumres.2011.05.008
  12. Heckman J., LaLonde R., Smith J., 1999, «The Economics and Econometrics of Active Labor Market Programs». In: Ashenfelter O., Card D. (eds.), Handbook of Labor Economics. Amsterdam: North-Holland, 1865-2097.
  13. Iacus S. M., King G., Porro G., 2011, «Multivariate Matching Methods that are Monotonic Imbalance Bounding». Journal of the American Statistical Association, 106, 493: 345-361. DOI: 10.1198/jasa.2011.tm09599
  14. Iacus S.M., King G., Porro G., 2012, «Causal Inference Without Balance Checking: Coarsened Exact Matching». Journal of Political Analysis, 20, 1: 1-24. DOI: 10.1093/pan/mpr013
  15. Kleinhanß W., Murillo C., San Juan C., Sperlich S., 2007, «Efficiency, Subsidies, and Environmental Adaptation of Animal Farming Under cap». Agricultural Economics, 36, 1: 49-65. DOI: 10.1111/j.1574-0862.2007.00176.x
  16. Loi M., Rodrigues M., 2012, A Note on the Impact Evaluation of Public Policies: The Counterfactual Analysis. mpra Paper.
  17. Mary S., 2013, «Assessing the Impacts of Pillar 1 and 2 Subsidies on tfp in French Crop Farms». Journal of Agricultural Economics, 64, 1: 133-144. DOI: 10.1111/j.1477-9552.2012.00365.x
  18. Milanetto L., Pavone S., Pagliarino E., 2012, Il settore agroindustriale piemontese. cnr-Ceris e Regione Piemonte. www.regione.piemonte.it/agri/psr2007_13/dwd/valutazione/rapporto_agroindustria_piemontese_ceris.pdf.
  19. Rizov M., Pokrivcak J., Ciaian P., 2013, «cap Subsidies and Productivity of the eu Farms». Journal of Agricultural Economics, 64, 3: 537-557. DOI: 10.1111/1477-9552.12030
  20. Rubin D.B., 1976, «Multivariate Matching Methods That are Equal Percent Bias Reducing, I: Some Examples». Biometrics, 32, 1: 109-120. DOI: 10.2307/2529343
  21. Rubin D.B., Stuart E.A., 2006, «Affinely Invariant Matching Methods with Discriminant Mixtures of Proportional Ellipsoidally Symmetric Distributions».
  22. Annals of Statistics, 34, 4: 1814-1826. DOI: 10.1214/009053606000000407
  23. Rubin D.B., Thomas N., 1992, «Affinely Invariant Matching Methods with Ellipsoidal Distributions». Annals of Statistics, 20, 2: 1079-1093.
  24. Sckokai P., Moro D., 2009, «Modelling the Impact of the cap Single Farm Payment on Farm Investment and Output». European Review of Agricultural Economics, 36: 395-423. DOI: 10.1093/erae/jbp026
  25. White H., 2011, Impact Evaluation - The Experience of the Independent Evaluation Group of the World Bank. Washington: Independent Evaluation Group, The World Bank.

  • Do local subsidies to firms create jobs? Counterfactual evaluation of an Italian regional experience Giuseppe Porro, Valentina Salis, in Papers in Regional Science /2018 pp.1039
    DOI: 10.1111/pirs.12317

Sara Pavone, Elena Ragazzi, Lisa Sella, Sostenere le imprese agro-industriali in Piemonte: un’analisi controfattuale in "SCIENZE REGIONALI " 3 Suppl./2015, pp 129-143, DOI: 10.3280/SCRE2015-S03007