International SPERA Seminar on General Equilibrium Approaches to Development
22nd October 2007 – 9.30
Faculty of Economics – University of Pavia
Via San Felice, 7 – Pavia
Organized by:
-Research Centre SPERA
-Department of Business Research – University of Pavia
-Department of Economic Sciences – University of Verona
According to the relevance that quantitative models have for public interventions analysis, the SPERA Centre (Research Centre on Economic, Rural and Environmental Policies) has organized, in cooperation with the Department of Business Research of the University of Pavia and the Department of Economic Sciences of the University of Verona, an international seminar whose aim is to investigate potentials and challenges that characterize general equilibrium approaches to development.
The assessment of various public policy hypotheses requires an increasingly deeper knowledge of all direct and indirect effects they may produce on a socio-economic system. In this perspective, general equilibrium approaches represent an important tool not only to carry out a research, but also to analyse a policy and to build a consensus around it. As a matter of fact, differently from partial equilibrium models that refer to one market at a time, the above mentioned approaches are able to put to evidence the effects caused by all possible policy choices on firms of different sectors and on different groups of households, allowing to choose the most economically and socially desirable public intervention scenario. For this reason, general equilibrium models, which had been initially confined to universities and research centres, have recently found a certain diffusion among governments and local administrations as tools to formulate and debate territorial programmes for local economic development and all other public policies, in general, and also as instruments to evaluate the economic impact of economic and social policies adopted by public administrations.
In this framework, the seminar aims at being an opportunity for a constructive exchange between public institutions and academic researchers, on general equilibrium models potentials and perspective uses, both in developed and in developing countries, referring in particular to the issues related to modelling processes, statistical needs, rural and urban development, trade liberalization and poverty.
Several experts from Public Institutions (FAO, ISMEA, ISTAT and Revenue Agency - Research Office) and academic researchers form the Universities of Cergy-Pontoise (France), Patras (Greece), Molise, Pavia and Verona, have been invited to debate on these issues.
Information note on SPERA, Research Centre on Economic Rural and Environmental Policies
SPERA Research Centre has been established in 2002 by the Universities Politecnica delle Marche, of Calabria, Chieti Pescara and Verona, in order to promote the scientific cooperation among researchers, in the field of economic, rural and environmental policy evaluation. Recently, the Universities of Molise, Parma and Pavia have joint the Centre.
SPERA promotes and coordinates both theoretical and applied multidisciplirary studies and researches, aimed at the impact evaluation of economic, rural and environmental policies in developed and developing countries. The Centre publishes of a series of specialized working papers, also of interest of policy makers, on the web site participates to the online review Agriregionieuropa ( and cooperates with the member Universities to the organization of conferences, refresher courses and international summer schools on local development, management of natural resources, health and applied CGE models for planning and growth.