Hiroaki Shirayanagi (p), Yukisada Kitamura

Francesco Foglia

The population of Japan has been declining since 2004 and the average age of the population is expected to become increasingly older. However, the number of emergency calls in Japan has been increasing every year, and has doubled in the past 20 years. So the following challenges arise: how to respond to the rapid increase in the number of emergency calls; how to ensure the level of residents' services, such as emergency transport, considering the limited number of personnel, facilities, equipment, and vehicles, and the severe financial situation in the case of multiple fire stations. This is important from the viewpoint of risk diversification and as well as to maintain the motivation of those who are engaged in the work.
　So, the purpose of this study is to quantitatively discuss the following topics, focusing on the Otokuni Fire Department. Based on the actual data of emergency services in 2016, we quantitatively showed the current status of emergency transport operations, such as the number of emergency transports, travel time from the fire station to the location requested by the ambulance. And, we quantitatively showed how this would affect the "supporting emergency transport ratio," the total travel time for the Otokuni Fire Department, and the total travel time for each emergency team. If the total arrival time is reduced, the burden of each emergency team is reduced. This social benefit is generally referred to as the benefit of increasing the rate of lives saved.
As a result, the current supporting emergency transport ratio is 29.2% and the total travel time of the Otokuni Fire Department is 41,659 minutes/year in the current system of four fire stations. But it increased to 43,896 minutes/year in the integrated system of three fire stations when the ratio of supporting emergency transport was equal to the current system of four fire stations. So, emergency medical evacuation levels could be maintained at the same level as the current situation if the supporting emergency transport ratio in Otokuni Fire Department is 15% or less.
Furthermore, the total travel time can be reduced to 3,144 minutes when the transport is performed by the integrated system of three fire stations. The annual benefit of this improvement in emergency medical services is 279 million yen per year. This value is considerably larger than the annual cost reduction of 27 million yen per year at the time of the reorganization.

Elena Calegari (p), Antonella Ferrara, Marzia Freo, Aura Reggiano

Hiroaki Shirayanagi

In recent years, the debate around the need to move “Beyond GDP”, has given rise to more comprehensive and multidimensional measures of well-being (WB). In this perspective, given the relevance of the European Union’s (EU) Cohesion Policy (CP), aimed at strengthening economic and social cohesion by reducing disparities in the level of development between regions, it is worth studying the impact of CP on regional WB and its possible heterogeneity. Relying on the inference on counterfactual distributions proposed by Chernozhukov et al. (2013), we estimate the impact of CP on WB and its dimensions. The adopted indicator is an extended regionalised version of the Human Development Index that allows us to show the effect of CP for the programming period 2007-2013 on three WB dimensions: the economic performance, the level of education, and the health conditions, but offering a more reliable measure for developed regions respect to the standard HDI. The results show that CP affects regional WB, unveiling heterogeneity across regions. Finally, the effect of CP on WB fades when focusing on EU15 Member States, confirming the existence of a significant impact especially in low- performing areas.

Francesco Foglia (p)

Elena Calegari

The paper assesses the ex-post impact of a specific innovation policy intervention financed by the European Structural and Investment Funds in Calabria under the Smart Specialisation Strategy on SMEs performance. In particular, the aim is to identify whether the possible added value of the EU funds in a region characterised by low levels of development and competitiveness compared to European regions has encouraged investment in innovative activities impacting employment and business performance, compared to a counterfactual scenario in the absence of treatment. Therefore, the net effect of the policy is estimated by comparing the treated units with the counterfactual scenario, by using the Regression Discontinuity Design method, considered by Maas et al. (2017) as a rigorous and valid alternative to the randomised controlled trial, and by Lee and Lemieux (2010) as more reliable than other estimation methods used in natural experiments. As the majority of policy measures financed under the European cohesion policy are ongoing, there is little evidence of the ex-post impact of actions planned under the Smart Specialisation Strategy at a regional level. The paper’s results contribute to identifying the effects of innovation policies financed by S3 at the microeconomic level and foster the debate on evidence-based policy timely for the 2021-2027 programming period.