1. Conceptual Issues in Rural Development and Empirical Testing Amaya Vega Irish Centre for Rural Transformation and Sustainability (ICERTS) Forum for Research on Rural Balanced Development, Sustainability and Natural Resource Management 18 th February 2009

2. Conceptual Issues Conceptual issues critical to rural development: –Rural Enterprise and Sustainability –Network behaviour and innovation –Market Access - Accessibility

3. Rural Enterprise (I) Distinctive characteristics of rural firms and the rural business environment –Small average firm size –Sector mix – service sector –Enterprising behaviour and the effect of the urban- rural migration –Limited size of the local market –Remoteness and high transportation costs –Geography of innovation, accessible vs. remote rural areas

4. Rural Enterprise (II) Lessons learnt to encourage and support rural enterprising (North and Smallbone, 2006): –Adjust policy response to local circumstances, i.e. bottom-up approaches –Need to improve internal and external coherence of policies –Need to encourage diversification of farming into other agricultural activities/non-farming activities –Need to encourage cooperation and networking

5. Networks - Clusters Rural enterprises in accessible and remote rural areas need both local and global linkages to be successful. Value added creation through the promotion of cooperative behaviour Cluster strategies are more suited to the characteristics of rural economies, i.e. creation of social infrastructure and conditions of trust

6. Access to Markets Economic convention suggests that highly accessible locations enjoy higher rates of growth and performance Evidence shows that some less accessible areas present high levels of economic growth inconsistent with their disadvantaged location. Accessibility is only one of several factors determining rural economic performance. Rural business networks provide an alternative to more conventional agglomerative economies as stimulus to local rural development

7. Performance of Rural Enterprises and Rural Areas SPATIALNON-SPATIAL Spatial clusters of activities – agglomeration economies Access to markets and the transport infrastructure Business networks and clusters Information and Communication Technologies Aspects of social capital Governance structures

8. Accessibility and Clusters Concept of accessibility and measurement within the rural economy Relationship between spatial clusters of activities and accessibility –Local spatial statistics and GIS to identify spatial clusters of activities –Accessibility measures Assess whether less accessible areas systematically lie outside clusters of activities

9. Thank you,