Regional development in Greece: An evaluation of the effectiveness of the Industrial Areas Programme.

This Thesis is concerned with the broad area of the evaluation of regional development policy. The Thesis provides the theoretical context and contributes to evaluation of policies based on provision of organised industrial infrastructure and support systems to national peripheries. It mainly focuses on the Industrial Areas Programme in Greece. The purpose of the research is to measure the effectiveness of the Programme as a lever for regional economic development. Specific interest is paid to the effects of the policy on the regional productivity and the necessity for technological advancement. Basic characteristics, the administrative structure of the country and the setting for the regional development problem are presented early in the Thesis. The institutional and legal framework for development and the emergence of the Industrial Areas Programme follow. In the theoretical part an analysis of the range of regional development theories and their connection with the Industrial Areas Programme is made. This is followed by more recent theories of development based on the implementation of modern technology and the conditions needed for this. An analysis of regional productivity is undertaken utilising the total factor productivity methodology. A productivity typology emerges and first linkages are made to the Industrial Areas Programme. The typology then becomes the base for a field study that surveyed the administration of the Industrial Areas of Greece and firms established therein. Information collected includes the range, infrastructure and facilities of these projects, the technological levels of the participant firms and the efforts made to advance such levels. The survey provides a most useful attitudinal framework for the evaluation of the Programme's effectiveness. Finally, a multi-faceted evaluation is made based first on analysis of employment growth and second on monetary flows in the form of a cost-benefit analysis. The latter provides a generalised methodology, utilising both a pay-back and a full-life evaluation procedure. Analyses in general ascribe some positive effects of the policy but of variable intensity across the projects. The final part resumes the theoretical evaluation, outlines the empirical measurements and findings and proceeds to discuss the policy implications of the Thesis