Rural regions in the EU are currently undergoing significant economic and social changes, mostly induced

ASSESSING THE ECONOMIC EFFECTS OF PRIVATE INVESTMENTINITIATIVES IN RURAL AREAS OF SOUTHERN EUROPE: A REGIONALSAM APPROACH IN GREECE*D. Psaltopoulos, D. Skuras, and K.J. ThomsonPaper presented to the Thirteenth International Conference onInput-Output Techniques,Macerata, Italy, 21 - 25 August 2000AbstractThis paper presents an empirical investigation into the economic effects of privateinvestment initiatives provided to secondary and tertiary SMEs, in the poor, remote,agriculturally-dependent rural area of Aitoloakarnania in Greece. First, the socio-economic profile of the area is presented, followed by a description of theimplementation of the related policy-incentives during the 1982-97 period.Subsequently, a regional Social Accounting Matrix (SAM) is used to portray thestructural characteristics of the local economy, followed by the estimation of theeconomic impacts of private investment initiatives, distinguished into investmenteffects and capacity-adjustment effects. Impact analysis results indicate a moderateimpact in terms of the creation of local jobs. On the contrary, capacity-adjustmenteffects seem to be substantial, however a clear descending trend is observed in termsof job-creation per monetary-unit of private investment. The effectiveness of theregional development policy in terms of the gross cost per job is moderate when onlythe jobs created on site are taken into account. However, if the jobs created to thewhole regional economy are ...