agriregionieuropa Closing session Few final considerations Giovanni Anania University of Calabria (Italy) & Spera 122 nd European Association of Agricultural Economists Seminar Evidence-Based Agricultural and Rural Policy Making Methodological and Empirical Challenges of Policy Evaluation February 17 th – 18 th, 2011, Ancona (Italy) associazioneAlessandroBartola studi e ricerche di economia e di politica agraria Centro Studi Sulle Politiche Economiche, Rurali e Ambientali Università Politecnica delle Marche

agriregionieuropa 122 nd EAAE Seminar, February 17 th – 18 th, 2011, Ancona (Italy) Two days, 6 plenary and 76 (…actually 21) selected contributed papers later, what did we learn? …in 9 minutes …I am sorry: MISSION IMPOSSIBLE! a very partial,highly subjective (strongly biased) brief recap of what I am going home with from Ancona

agriregionieuropa 122 nd EAAE Seminar, February 17 th – 18 th, 2011, Ancona (Italy) Evidence-based agricultural and rural policy development - a view from the UK on linking research and policy Louise Shaxson Methodological and empirical progress and challenges in integrated assessment of agricultural systems and policies Martin K. van Ittersum, Thomas Heckelei, Alfons G.J.M Oude Lansink, Joost Wolf, Argyris Kanellopoulos, Wolfgang Britz Modelling the EU agriculture and policy: departing from the best world Alexandre Gohin The impact of Pillar I support on farm choices and behaviour: conceptual and methodological challenges Daniele Moro, Paolo Sckokai Towards an enhanced evaluation of rural development policy: insights from EU and US approaches. Janet Dwyer, David Blandford Evaluating agricultural and rural policies: an EU Commission Perspective Tassos Haniotis

agriregionieuropa 122 nd EAAE Seminar, February 17 th – 18 th, 2011, Ancona (Italy) The CAP and the “evidence” (4) Decoupling and SFP (4) Trade policy (4) Rural development policy (II, 8) LEADER progr. and quality of life in rural areas (5) Special poster session: The evaluation of RDPs in Italy Environment and public goods (III, 12) Farmers' behaviour and choices (II, 8) Multisectoral approaches (5) Distributional issues (5) Data collection and issues (5) Markets, food chains and consumers (4) Efficiency, technological change and productivity (4) Treatment effects and counterfactual cases (4) Country-level evidence (4)

agriregionieuropa 122 nd EAAE Seminar, February 17 th – 18 th, 2011, Ancona (Italy) plenary papers were diverse and all stimulating, each in its own way I found selected contributed paper of higher-than-usual quality, and many of those in the sessions I attended were very good

agriregionieuropa 122 nd EAAE Seminar, February 17 th – 18 th, 2011, Ancona (Italy) main lesson I learned relates to errors to avoid when making policy evaluations (there are a lot of them which are common, and several I did myself) in policy evaluations farmers’ individual response matter (policy changes affect not only their decisions, but how they make decisions as well) quantitative-only assessments may miss a relevant part of the policy impact (…not only in the case of RD policies) often evaluating the process and the path is as important as assessing the final outcome

agriregionieuropa 122 nd EAAE Seminar, February 17 th – 18 th, 2011, Ancona (Italy) think in GE terms even when using a PE model do not forget the implications of the assumptions you made (and accurately listed) on how the world works (which are usually quite different from how it actually works) when discussing the policy implications of you results generate and provide your results as a stochastic, rather then certain, event many issues are wicked, are our models representing a simplified world, or are they simply naive?

agriregionieuropa 122 nd EAAE Seminar, February 17 th – 18 th, 2011, Ancona (Italy) we are good, but we are humans, the right model and the needed data cannot be generated by tomorrow morning making a good model which took few years to put together become obsolete because of lack of maintanance is a waste of (often public) resources if you care about the social usefulness/impact of your work, get the final users of your policy assessment exercise involved during the process, as a “training” activity (for both sides!) models are not needed for ex-post policy evaluations (?)

agriregionieuropa 122 nd EAAE Seminar, February 17 th – 18 th, 2011, Ancona (Italy) …unfortunately this is a bad thing as well, but I prefer to stay on the optimistic side the good thing is that one of the conclusions I am going home with is that, although we do a better job with respect to years ago, a lot can and needs to be done in the area of policy evaluation

agriregionieuropa 122 nd EAAE Seminar, February 17 th – 18 th, 2011, Ancona (Italy) methodology of evaluation and evaluation process gap in data needs what can we do to make needed models and data available when policy makers and stakeholders want us to have them available and running “by tomorrow morning”? Was something needed in larger quantities?

agriregionieuropa 122 nd EAAE Seminar, February 17 th – 18 th, 2011, Ancona (Italy) A good seminar! MANY THANKS to Andrea, Antonello, Beatrice, Emilio, Valentina, … …and Roberto e Franco!