New research to help assess economic impacts on a regional level
Macroeconomic assessment on a national scale represents good governance at its best, especially in these troubled economic times. What is often lacking, however, is an assessment model that can pinpoint the effects of economic policy on specific regions. To address this challenge, the EU-funded INTERIM (Integrating economic regional impact models) project worked to create a more comprehensive, integrated approach to regional economic impact analysis. To achieve this, the project team sought to connect under one framework two different yet effective models: econometric input output (EIO) and computable general equilibrium. It conferred with several academics in the field to shed light on devising and elaborating such a sophisticated model. A major milestone was achieved with fine-tuning and testing the EIO model using data from the region of Wales as a testbed. The model successfully enabled long-term forecasts of employment and output for the region, giving policymakers useful data to assess the economy. While full integration of both models was a more elusive goal that could not be achieved within the current project, INTERIM produced valuable research and insight on the topic. The academic findings, along with recommendations on further research, did ultimately deliver a novel method not previously considered among structural fund assessments of pre-sector selection by regions. The method can be of great benefit to researchers and policymakers in Europe, potentially yielding data than can help reshape economic policy on a regional scale. The project's results were disseminated through research papers and journals in both Europe and the United States. They were communicated through workshops and conferences on both sides of the Atlantic, as well as through policy dissemination documents intended for the Welsh government. Better impact models are bound to emerge once the results are fully exploited.
Keywords
Economic impacts, INTERIM, economic regional impact, econometric input output
