© Centre for European Studies - Alexandru
Ioan Cuza University of Iași
About.
Advancing ground-breaking research in
regional growth and development
theories, through a resilience approach:
towards a convergent, balanced and
sustainable European Union
PN-III-P4-ID-PCCF-2016-0166
The current challenges that the EU faces highlight, as
never before, the Union’s crucial need to move
forward on its integration and convergence path, as
well as the necessity to manage more efficiently any
potential dilution risks and threats. Thus, the EU
needs to find new approaches and action tools that
would be most adequate for the current economic,
political and geopolitical context and for the
specificities of each member state. In this context,
the project proposes a ground-breaking analytical
model for the study of resilience with the case study
of Romania, although with a wider applicability at
European and international level. As such, the project
offers a new and state-of-the-art comprehensive
model of resilience in a multi-disciplinary, multi-level
and multi-actor approach and will consolidate the
knowledge in and about the European and
particularly Romania’s regional growth and
development perspectives. As such, the project aims
to design and provide new approaches, methods and
instruments for EU policies towards deeper
convergence, regional development and growth.
The research activities and results will greatly benefit
from the participation of lead experts with wide
expertise and international visibility, in both the
research teams and the management structures
which will enhance considerably the quality,
competitivity and visibility of Romanian research
activities and results at international level. Thus, the
position of director of the project will be filled by
Peter Nijkamp, Emeritus Professor in Regional
Economics and in Economic Geography, who will
definitely ensure high quality and visibility of the
action. The potential impact of the proposed project
is consistent as it has high scientific and normative
relevance, as well as a consistent explanatory power
and it will respond to key priorities in several areas of
strategic interests on the EU and Romania’s agendas.
Main objective
To provide a comprehensive understanding of the
European regional development and convergence
patterns, based on the resilience concept, and to
design new approaches, methods and instruments
for EU and national policies
Specific objectives
•
to develop a new theoretical and empirical
analysis framework of regional resilience from a
multi-dimensional, multi-level and multi-actor
approach;
•
to provide a comprehensive analysis of the
regional resilience determinants in EU’s
countries (the analysis will be conducted at
NUTS 0 and NUTS 2 for all EU’s countries; for
Romania the analysis will be performed at NUTS
3, and LAU 2 and will put in evidence the intra-
regional differences; between urban and rural
areas; between key actors);
•
to build an innovative model of regional growth
and convergence, based on a resilience
approach;
•
to propose a new normative framework for the
assessment of the European regional policies
and provide a set of policy recommendations for
increasing the EU and national policies’
effectiveness;
•
to promote the research and scientific
cooperation at national and European level in a
new, innovative field and to enable knowledge
transfer in the academia as well as among
stakeholders in EU’s countries, focused on
Romania;
•
to gather and promote lessons for Coronavirus
pandemic crisis – multi-dimensions perspective.
Activities
•
Update the current state of arts regarding
resilience theories focusing on four main aspects
of resilience
•
Elaborating and developing databases on the
determinants of resilience for all the countries in
the sample
•
Building a new methodological tool for assessing
regional resilience
•
Performing a regional resilience assessment for
the EU countries using long run time series for
each dimension
•
The integrative perspective of resilience will be
achieved by embedding resilience into the
regional convergence model
•
The application of the model to the Romanian
case, carrying out the case studies at NUTS3, and
LAU2 levels in order to evaluate and explain the
differences between regions, rural vs. urban
areas, as well as the territorial resilience
similarities/ dissimilarities
•
Developing a set of policy recommendations for
EU and for Romania
•
Communication and dissemination of the project
Project coordinator
This project is coordinated by professor Peter
Nijkamp. From 2009-2015, he was Honorary
University Professor at the same university. He has
been president of the governing board of the
Netherlands Research Council (NWO) (2002-2009). He
is also former president of the European Regional
Science Association and of the Regional Science
Association International. He is fellow of the Royal
Netherlands Academy of Sciences, and former vice-
president of this organization. In 1996, Peter Nijkamp
was awarded the most prestigious scientific prize in
the Netherlands, the Spinoza award.
Peter Nijkamp's main research interests cover plan
evaluation, multicriteria analysis, regional and urban
planning, transport systems analysis, mathematical
modelling of spatial systems, migration, technological
innovation, and environmental and resource
management. In his long research career he has
focused his research in particular on quantitative
methods for policy analysis, as well as on behavioural
analysis of economic agents. He has a broad
expertise in the economics of public policy, services
planning, infrastructure management, environmental
management and sustainable development.
PARTENERS
Alexandru Ioan Cuza University of Iași, Romania
(UAIC)
Bucharest University of Economic Studies, Romania
(ASE)
Babeș-Bolyai University, Cluj-Napoca, Romania (UBB)
This projectd is supported by a grant of Ministery of
Research and Innovation, CNCS - UEFISCDI, project
number PN-III-P4-ID-PCCF-2016-0166, within PNCDI
III