Abstract
In the final part of the nineties both the theoretical literature and also the effective Governance experience stressed the fact that the Public administrations strongly need for a model specifically dedicated to evaluate the activity of planning of development policies. In this paper we propose a quite innovative methodology for specify an evaluation model on which basis the "planner" is able to assess the effects of strategic and sector development regional plans, both at the aggregate level and also in terms of their geographical distribution. On the basis of a set of economic indicators, that the model combines to define a Synthetic Priority Index (SPI), the administrators involved in the planning activity (sector oriented or local oriented) are able to make optimal choices on: a) The regional distributions of public Investments b) The economic and financial features and characteristics of public Investments c) The Architecture of public Investments In other terms our methodology allows for handling three fundamental and often puzzling questions: Assessing the determinants of the public investment Finding the "priority" areas to which redirect the public investments Evaluating the economic impact of the investments One of the main features of the model lies on its eclectic approach; in fact the definition of the SPI is based on the combination of an eterogeneous and large set of informations, emphazising the relationships among the economic theory (aimed at quantifying the impact of investments and evaluating the policies planning), the territory (to be intended as the working and intervention space), and the public finance (to be viewed as the optimal rule of collecting and spending the public resources). An empirical application to the Lombardy case gives some encouraging insight into the model performance.