Rural Areas and Well-Being in EU Countries + UK: A Taxonomy and a Cluster Analysis

Abstract

The issue of rural and marginal areas has regained centrality in recent times, also due to the fact that rural areas actively participate in the EU’s green and digital transition. The starting point of the paper is the concept of fair and sustainable well-being, which has been interpreted differently in relation to the diversity of territories and particularly in relation to the differences between urban and rural areas. The objective of this work is the construction of a synthetic index of the welfare of European countries through the Wroclaw taxonomic method and through the use of logit models for the identification of best practices of local realities and the interpretation in a more immediate way of the fair and sustainable welfare of each European country at a rural level.

Advancing ‘Net Zero Competition’ in Asia-Pacific under a dynamic era: a comparative study on the carbon neutrality policy toolkit in Japan, Singapore and Hong Kong

“…Fiscal policy refers to government spending and taxation, and monetary policy means the management of interest rates and the money supply. Fiscal policy can be used to stimulate economic growth and innovation by increasing government spending or decreasing taxes, which can lead to more consumption and business investment; while financial policy, on the other hand, can lower interest rates to stimulate economic growth by making borrowing cheaper (Marecki et al, 2022;Marino & Tebala, 2022;Olteanu & Fichter, 2022;Zetzsche & Anker-Sørensen, 2022). These could comprise direct subsidies or disguised subsidies for renewable energy-based electricity (FiTs, for example), tax allowances for companies or in forms of purchase tax exemption for consumers' low-carbon product purchases, 2 and granting a belowmarket rate of interest for the purchase or installation of certain goods and services in line with low-carbon transitions (Debbarma & Choi, 2022;Kubín et al, 2022;Larsen, 2022); Direct investment is a government-led approach in which funds are allocated directly to specific projects, companies or organisations (Cardoso et al, 2020;Costello et al, 2009;Erdogan, 2021;Neves et al, 2020).…”