María Vera-Cabello (p), Marcos Sanso-Navarro , Fernando Sanz-Gracia

This paper studies the socioeconomic determinants of terrorism at the sub-national level in Colombia. With this aim, and in order to deal with model uncertainty, a Bayesian model averaging framework has been implemented to departmental data. The variables robustly linked with terror are the importance of the social, communal and personal services sector and the employment rate. These findings suggest that the violence experienced by this country during the sample period analyzed was mainly driven by economic grievances. Therefore, a sensible strategy to struggle with terrorism in similar contexts should consist of increasing its opportunity cost. Previous results are not significantly altered by using relative measures of terror, specifying alternative parameters and model priors, or controlling for the possible presence of
spatial spillovers.

Giuseppe Francesco Gori (p)

Public procurement represents an important lever of the economic and budgetary policies of the various levels of the public administration. In the Eurozone, the volume of expenditure on goods, works and services carried out by public administrations represents about 16% of GDP and 29% of public spending.
A crucial aspect in the public procurement debate, is the selection of firms, which affects the magnitude of public expenditure’s growth-enhancing effect via its spatial distribution.
To this regard, a peculiar instrument encompassed by the Italian procurement legislation - i.e. the firm’s legality rating - is aimed at promoting and introducing principles of ethical behavior in the business environment.
The rating is part of a more general aim to reduce the information asymmetry that characterizes the relationship between the company and the contracting authority, thus reducing the selection costs for the latter and limiting the incidence of some of the pathological phenomena of the Italian public procurement market (corruption and mafia infiltation).
The purpose of our work is twofold: we identify the role that this rating system has (i) in improving rated firms’ performances in terms in terms of volume of awards and in terms of efficiency in the execution phase of the contracts awarded and (ii) in affecting the spatial transmission mechanism of public expenditure favouring the market penetration of well rated firms in territorial areas carachterised by a poor social and institutional quality. We resort to a rich dataset of procurement contracts concluded between 2012 and 2017 in Italy and we identify the causal effect of this policy using quasi-experimental methods to select suitable controls among firms which do not have a legality rating. In doing so, we control for pre-treatment differences between treated and controls accounting for several firms’ characteristics, including financial and organizational ones.

Grétar Eythórsson (p)

Challenges to rural regional development in Iceland have been many in the last 30 years or so. While the capital area in the south-west around Reykjavík has had population growth, a big part of the country has had population decline and problems with economic development. Regions such as Westfjords (with 33% depopulation since 1990), North-west, parts of North-east and south region have suffered from negative population development for decades. One of the suggested explanations to this is the great fragmentation of the local government system - a population of almost 350,000 and 72 municipalities, an average population of 4,840. Reykjavík is the largest municipality with a population of 126,000 - median size of an Icelandic municipality is 886. More than 1/3 of the municipalities have population of less than 500 and 55 percent less than 1,000, the fragmentation is a fact.
The premises and ability to cope with their tasks – mandatory and voluntary – trying to create and/or maintain living conditions that are according to the 21st century is limited. The small municipalities lack capacity gained with size, and even they lack the necessary economy of scale (see Baldersheim and Rose 2010).
What solutions to try to tackle the problems are possible?
Re-scaling through municipal amalgamations, or through inter-municipal cooperation have since long time been suggested as means in this. By strengthening municipalities so they can cope with their tasks, better provision of services can be reached. Better living conditions provided can, therefore be means to cope with the depopulation. Inter-municipal cooperation has also been used in order to solve the disadvantages of small size.
In this paper I intend to deal with the question whether municipal amalgamations or inter-municipal cooperation have been successful means in this struggle. I will go through relevant literature on this and even go through evidence that has been brought forward. The results could give indication on what can be done to improve regional and rural development in Iceland and even other countries.
References:
Baldersheim H and Rose L (2010). Territorial Choice. The Politics of Boundaries and Borders. Palgrave MacMillan.
Steiner R (et. al.) (2016). A Comparative Analysis of Amalgamation Reforms in Selected European Countries. Palgrave MacMillan.
Teles F and Swianiewicz P (eds.) (2018). Inter-Municipal Cooperation in Europe. Institutions and Governance. Palgrave MacMillan.