Développement régional, urbain et rural

This paper takes stock of international good practices to measure progress and impacts towards a circular economy, based on existing circular economy strategies and related measurement frameworks at different levels of government. It also provides an overview of 215 operational and aspirational indicators available in Italy from official statistical sources and targeted circular economy reports. It highlights measurement challenges and concludes by identifying opportunities to expand the monitoring framework in Italy to measure progress towards a circular economy.

A small group of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) that grow fast over a short period of time, i.e., scalers, make an outsized contribution to job creation and economic growth. This paper provides a portrait of scalers in the Italian region of Trentino-Alto Adige/Südtirol, and its two autonomous provinces: Trentino and Bolzano-Bozen. The region hosts and attracts a dynamic population of scalers. Around one in nine SMEs in Trentino-Alto Adige/Südtirol is an employment scaler, and more than one in six is a turnover scaler. However, the contribution of the fastest-growing scalers is lower than in the rest of Centre and North Italy, which is in part due to the sectoral specialisation of scalers in the region.

Improving rural development, well-being and maximising the potential in rural areas requires greater horizontal and vertical co-ordination at the national, regional, and local level as well as the mainstreaming of rural issues across all policies. However, taking an integrated approach to rural development - where rural ministries and non-rural ministries coordinate in the development of polices and initiatives - is often very challenging. Rural proofing is a tool to help policy makers overcome this challenge and develop more nuanced rural-friendly policies. It involves making policy decisions based on evidence on rural dynamics available in a timely fashion to enable changes and adjustments. In practice, however, it is a mechanism that has proved complex to design, implement, and sustain. This article explores how more robust rural proofing models can be developed, with health as a focal point. Drawing on lessons from different OECD member countries, it develops a roadmap for more effective rural proofing mechanisms to help embed the practice in the policy space and culture of governments.

The Autonomous Province of Trento (Trentino) is among the most productive regions in Europe, but over the past two decades its productivity growth has stagnated. As a result, the productivity gap of Trentino widened by over 20% compared to regions with the same productivity level in 2000. The benchmarking of productivity drivers in Trentino with those of 'peer' regions points to several policy priorities, including: reviving productivity in tradeable sectors, also through increased internationalisation; increasing the share of the labour force with a tertiary education; and getting more out of public R&D while boosting private sector R&D.

The Autonomous Province of Bolzano-Bozen, Italy, has embraced the 2030 Agenda through a sustainability pact including its sustainable development strategy 'Everyday for Future'. The strategy defines seven fields of action that were derived from the SDGs framework to promote sustainability across policy areas such as the conservation of the natural environment, the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions, competitiveness and social justice. The SDGs offer a clear framework to tackle the province’s main territorial development challenges, such as climate change, the transition to sustainable agriculture, mobility, tourism, and affordable housing. This report provides guidance on how to harness the implementation of the SDGs to address these challenges through concrete measures across the seven fields of action, identify and manage synergies and trade-offs between sectoral policies and, in turn, help the province implement Everyday for Future.

As in most OECD countries, obtaining good-quality housing in a location facilitating access to jobs, public services and amenities can be very challenging for Italian households with low or unstable income. This book sheds light on access to housing in Italy from two different, complementary vantage points. First, it puts the Italian housing market in international perspective using OECD statistics and analysis to compare housing policies and outcomes in Italy to other OECD countries. Second, it zooms in on selected Italian innovative housing projects, where it asks residents and other stakeholders about their experiences with these initiatives: what were their difficulties, how have the projects been designed and developed, what did the projects bring to them?

In recent years, international development co-operation has undergone a transition from a conventional donor-recipient model to a partnership-centred approach, including with regions and cities. Friuli Venezia Giulia, a small region in north-eastern Italy with extensive policy autonomy, has been active in international co-operation and is seeking to get more out of its actions both for the region and with its co-operation partners around the world. This paper evaluates its strategy on international partnership and co-operation and proposes recommendations, including more targeted initiatives that leverage the expertise of the region for greater impact in partner countries and for local benefits.

The Rethinking Regional Attractiveness in the New Global Environment report highlights lessons learned from multiple regional case studies from five EU countries (Ireland, Italy, Portugal, Spain and Sweden), additional work with Latin American and Caribbean regions, and a series of webinars and one-on-one dialogues on rethinking regional attractiveness. The OECD’s innovative multidimensional approach to assessing regional attractiveness considers global engagement beyond international connections and economic factors alone. The methodology considers more than 50 indicators to develop regional attractiveness profiles covering six domains of attractiveness: economic attraction, connectedness, visitor appeal, natural environment, resident well-being, and land-use and housing. The report helps regional and national policy makers to understand how individual regions fare in a new global environment that continues to deal with the impacts of the COVID-19 crisis, compounded by the consequences of Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine and existing megatrends – all of which produce asymmetric impacts within and between countries and regions – and identify the policy levers available to enhance their attractiveness to the international target groups of investors, talent, and visitors. It also considers the need to co-ordinate across levels of government, across policy fields, and with private stakeholders, and highlights good practices to implement regional attractiveness policies.

Public procurement accounts for around 12% of global GDP and 63% of expenditures are managed by subnational governments across OECD countries. In Italy, municipalities can impose penalties on contractors for breaches of contract, for example delays in delivery, often leading to contractors suing the municipality in local courts, which can in turn further delay delivery. As such the efficiency of the local judiciary can have a strong bearing on the final delivery of public works. This study assesses the causal effect of those efficiencies on the ultimate delay in the execution of local public contracts. The results show that inefficient courts lead to further delays in the execution of public works that are already long overdue. However, inefficient courts also appear to deter companies to pursue litigation in cases where delays were much lower. Overall, the impact on long-overdue contracts prevails and the aggregate effect is negative: the total delay in the execution of local public contracts in the 25% least efficient courts is more than twice as large as in the 25% most efficient courts.

The impacts of the war in Ukraine will be felt severely within OECD economies, especially in border regions on the front-line of the humanitarian refugee crisis. The economic impacts, in particular those driven by rising energy prices, will also be spatially differentiated, affecting some regions more than others. Italy is no exception, with gas-intensive industries concentrated in northern regions, and wheat-based food and farming prevailing in southern regions and islands. While, overall, Russia accounted for a minor share of Italian exports, some regions and industries are more vulnerable than others to falls in bilateral trade, including destinations popular with high per-capita expenditure Russian tourists.