Fra i mutamenti più rilevanti nell’economia e nella politica economica italiana degli anni Novanta vi è la fine dell’Intervento straordinario nel Mezzogiorno e, successivamente, l’avvio della stagione della cosiddetta "Nuova Programmazione". Il libro individua le novità più significative rispetto alla lunghissima esperienza precedente, per poi analizzare il quadro teorico di riferimento, i principi e gli obiettivi del nuovo modello, nonché la sua traduzione in interventi concreti. Nel valutare l’impatto delle politiche regionali attuate in Italia negli ultimi venti anni, gli autori sottolineano le difficoltà del passaggio dall’intervento straordinario all’intervento ordinario.

Without "Cassa". Regional development policies in the Mezzogiorno after the extraordinary intervention

In the Nineties, profound changes took place in the Italian economy and society. Among them we can enumerate a radical shift in Italian regional development policy. After the definitive end of the "Cassa per il Mezzogiorno" (Southern Italy Development Fund) activities in 1992, there was a vacuum in regional policy which lasted through the mid-1990s, when a new instrument for the funding of selected investment projects (Law 488/1992) went operational. In this book, the authors’ analysis starts from the description of the transition from "extraordinary intervention" (top down policy) to "ordinary intervention" explicitly aimed to favour not only the Southern regions but all depressed areas of the country. Then, they describe the theoretical background, the objective and the institutional design of the new Italian territorial competitiveness policy and how it has been put into action in the two last decades. Moreover, the book provides an evaluation of the results reached by the Italian regional policy in the same period. Keywords: regional policies, Southern Italy, evaluation JEL classification: R11, H50