Spatial Analysis of Rural Development Measures Providing a tool for better policy targeting Stronger accountability requirements and EU budget constraints will increase the pressure towards policies targeted on specific objectives such as the provision of public benefits (environmental, rural, social). For the EU`s rural development programmes 2007-2013 Member States are requested to collect indicators on characteristics, needs, expenditures and results. Additionally, managing authorities in some Member States have created GIS-based databases with a huge amount of data related to area-based measures. What is lacking is analysis in which these data sets are combined with other indicators at a high level of regional disaggregation. The FP7 EU project SPARD deals with this research question.

• to provide a framework for organising the collection and the use of regional key baseline data and evaluation results of Rural Development Programmes other statistical and economic information in a systematic, clear and concise way;
• to explain the causal relationships between regional characteristics and needs, on the one hand, and the Rural Development Programmes implementation and success in their spatial dimension, on the other,
• to develop and apply a spatial econometric modelling approach
• to build a tool that will help policymakers, both at EU and Member States/ regional level, to design better targeted Rural Development Programmes

EU FP7 Collaborative Project funded under the Theme "Knowledge - Based Bio-Economy (KBBE)
", Priority Area "Socio-economic research and support to policies" Project number 244944