Leader approach performance assessment in a Greek rural region

Rural Development policies and measures has since long been a primary aim for public policies in the EU and Greece, such that is the LEADER programme. The assessment of the performance of this policy for supporting an integrated development in a rural region in Greece is the main objective of the current study. Specifically, it is aimed to assess potential economy- wide impacts in the regional economy and capture impacts on the local output, employment and household income, employing regional Input-Output modeling. Results indicate that important impacts can be induced in the regional economy for specific sectors, despite the overall poor performance of the programme for the whole economy. The programme's performance is highly affected by the small budget and its distribution to the economy's sectors'