An Impact Analysis of SAPARD in Rural Areas by Alternative Methods of Regionalization

The aim of this article is to evaluate sensitivity of policy impact to the use of different methods of regionalization based on I-O approach. Policy impact is that coming from the application of the SAPARD pre-accession instrument for the period 2000-06 in three rural regions. Towards this aim, 8 alternative methods are applied to derive 8 corresponding I-O matrices for every region considered, from which impacts are calculated. The main results from this analysis are the following ones. First, results in terms of impact are influenced by the method employed, although variability among methods is contained. Second, methods would not seem to be affected by territorial dimension, since structure of differences among methods is generally the same in all the regions considered and for any kind of impact es-timated.