Investment Support under Rural Development Policy

The Program of Rural Development is providing support in order to improve competitiveness of farms and small business in rural regions. Another objective of the program is to finance non-productive investments in order to improve the environmental quality. The research project measures the efficiency, the effectiveness and the impact of support granted to single beneficiaries or groups of beneficiaries. Case studies from 10 European regions, among them Austria, will be analysed with a range of different methods. A comparison between the results of the analyses will allow conclusions on how appropriate different methods are in measuring the efficiency of investment programs.