Keywords

1 Emigrate or Cooperate? the Experience of the Genovesi Prize

The Province of Salerno is the primary area of interest targeted by the examined projects that are part of the activities eligible for the Antonio Genovesi Prize. This territory is marked by negative externalities with respect both to structural indicators of the European Community and to the survey on the quality of life (IlSole24Ore 2016; ISTAT 2016). The main problem concerns the work. Calculations on 2016 ISTAT data reveal that the male employment rate is 63%, the female’s only 37% and the inactivity rate is as much as 62% in the age range of 15–29 years. These ratios are even more worrying when compared with EU objectives for 2020, which aim for an employment rate (age range of 20–64 years) in Europe at 75% and in Italy at 67–69%, as well as to raise the female employment rate twice as much as that of men.

At the same time, the question arises about the inactivity rate of young people aged 15–29 years. In this age group, the population in the Province of Salerno is 199,549, with as many as 124,300 inactive, i.e. an inactivity rate of about 62%.

With regard then to the quality of life, it is sufficient to examine the summary of the data for the main indicators, namely school (education and training, full-time and day nurseries), elderly (care services and assistance), transport, health and justice, economic well-being, safety, environment. These are all issues of extreme importance, as is fully explained in the Encyclical Laudato Si’ (Borrelli and Citterio 2016). The province of Salerno is rated in the 103rd place out of 110 counties in the classification of the IlSole24Ore (2016). Details can be found in the Bes report (ISTAT 2016).

In this alarming context, the only alternative to migration resides in a solidarity aggregation. The decision to migrate is in fact a cost that not everyone is able to bear in economic and emotional terms, so that citizens remain inert as long as someone else decides for them. Only an exogenous factor, an occasion or a shared opportunity leads to aggregation and to cooperation (see Bank of Italy 2009).

The Genovesi Prize, in this context, constitutes a collaborative, bottom-up hypothesis implemented among universities, local authorities, business and local banks, to pool the experience and know-how necessary for the realization of public-interest investments through project financing and, therefore, with self-contained financial charges for the public sector.

The experiment of the Genovesi Prize enables Master Degree students in Civil, Environmental and Architecture Engineering granted by the Faculty of Engineering of the University of Salerno, or to those who have successfully completed a Course in Economic Evaluation of Projects, to select and verify the economic and financial sustainability of projects to be implemented in the territories, particularly aimed at urban regeneration (De Mare et al. 2015a, b; Nesticò and Pipolo 2015; Guarini et al. 2017). This theme is decisive in reading the content of the Encyclical of Pope Francis, too.

In this path, economic evaluation regains that centrality denied during many years of great waste of public resources, and the environment becomes an endogenous variable for development, together with cultural growth and accumulation of shared capital, able to influence the decision of young people to stay or to emigrate from their places of birth.

Even the Association for the Development of Industry in Southern Italy (SVIMEZ) identifies urban regeneration as the main driver for development of the South, as already experienced in Italy during the Second World War (SVIMEZ 2016). From this perspective, mutual and rural banks often become crucial links between the decision-making process and the realization, even to indicate a sustainable future and helping to preserve and recover the beauty of local areas (Granata 2015).

From an operative point of view, since 2010, thanks to the experience gained from the study meetings at the Cassa Rurale of Battipaglia, it was clear that any path to development of the activities about the Genovesi Prize must necessarily involve institutions, stakeholders of the area of interest and, above all, unused leveraged social capital.

The starting point of the study actions implemented are Three-year Plans of the local government and Regional Park Projects. The actors are students of the University of Salerno and entrepreneurs of the National Association of Builders (ANCE), as well as private virtuous entrepreneurs (e.g., Socomer Grandi Lavori) and the local bank Rural and Artisan Bank of Battipaglia and Montecorvino Rovella. The goal is to promote the realization of investments with positive economic, social and environmental impact, but also to pool experience and know-how to overcome the distinctions of class and background. The award takes the form of a certificate and a cash contribution in favor of the best research groups for each of the three categories in the competition, i.e., feasibility, creativity and research.

The job steps that engage students in project exercises of the Course in Economic Evaluation of Projects in the Department of Civil Engineering (DICIV) of the University of Salerno are:

  1. 1.

    analysis of three-year plans of the government and selection of priority actions for the business sector, feasibility and investment amounts;

  2. 2.

    for the selected action, the study of the relevant economic sector, market analysis, preliminary characterization of the co-treasurers and financial plan (revenue sources, potential customers etc.), and verification of available elaborated designs;

  3. 3.

    sizing of the interventions and the schedule of works (once the design choice is justified and the functional destinations are defined;

  4. 4.

    determination of the assumptions of cash and payment, sales, financing and other financial specifications;

  5. 5.

    estimation of the valuation indicators, often accompanied by risk analysis.

If the performance indicators (IRR, NPV etc.) demonstrate the sustainability of the project, the economic investigation ends with a positive opinion. If not, it continues to outline the strategic alternatives for enhancing investment performance.

The first five years (2011–2015) of the Genovesi Prize have attracted the participation of over 300 students, who worked on 70 selected projects for investment of more than 500 million euros (see Table 1). The urban and regional regeneration interventions represent about 45% of the total, for an amount of 235 million euros. The investment projects have been located so: 64% in the province of Salerno; 25% in the province of Avellino; and the remainder in the province of Naples and elsewhere in the country.

Table 1 Selected projects in the 2011–2015 editions of Genovesi Prize
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2 Cross-Sectoral Matrices for the Measurement of the Generated Effects on the Regional Economy

The total investment cost of €113,114,552, which flows from concrete realization of 23 of the 70 interventions on the survey area, is the starting point for predicting the economic effects produced in Campania. The computational tool is a cross-sectoral matrix. This helps in determining the impacts (output) generated by a change in aggregate demand (input, such as the investment in an industry) on the economy of the territory to which the matter pertains.Footnote 1

In the present work, the referenced cross-sectoral matrix is the Social Accounting Matrix (SAM) of Campania, updated to 2010Footnote 2 and still representative of the effective regional production structure.

The implementation of SAM Campania returns the effects generated by investments made in the construction industry. The result is synthetically expressed through three indicators: change in regional GDP (GDP = 0.145%), increase of employment (2421 work units) and environmental damage monetized (€10,896,370). Tables 2, 3 and 4 show excerpts from the cross-sectoral matrix used by the first two for economic and employment effects, the last as regards environmental impact.

Table 2 Effects on regional GDP and employment induced by implemented interventions
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Table 3 Economic impact in Campania Region
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Table 4 Environmental impact in Campania (in thousands of tons of pollution and per euro of investment)
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The output obtained expresses the impact over a period estimated to be between three and five years.

3 Conclusions

The educational module of disciplinary and professional immersion that refers to the Antonio Genovesi Prize is able to mobilize multiple synergies, on the public side such as those represented by territorial government bodies and research centers, and on the private side, arising from the knowledge of traders, associations and groups of citizens. Thus, it serves to constitute a common sharing context, important to encourage bottom-up urban-regeneration processes through the implementation of a network of micro-interventions, many of which are achievable through a public-private partnership.

At the base of the concrete success of the initiative, and thus the actual implementation of investment projects, there is a rigorous study of the economic and financial feasibility (Napoli et al. 2017), conducted according to the Cost-Benefit Analysis criteria, sometimes in association with multicriteria assessments. It is noted that for projects that exceed the technical and financial appraisals there is an increase in the likelihood of success of 50% and, therefore, the concrete realization of the interventions. All this involves positive impacts on the construction sector, the productive sectors and the entire neighboring social area. This can be studied through the implementation of input-output matrices, which summarize the patterns of trade in goods and services that occur between various productive sectors and between producers and end-user sectors.

The application of cross-sectoral matrix for the Campania region estimates the effects generated by investments realized in the construction sector, accounting for a significant increase in regional GDP (+0.68%), but also for job growth with over 11,000 new jobs, as well with a monetization of environmental damage. The logical process represented in the study to measure the effects generated by projects across the country— from forecast of investment costs to elaboration an economic methodology of analysis, such as input/output matrices— represents a practice exportable to other regional contexts. In this process, it becomes essential to cover the project under several profiles: financial but also social, cultural and environmental, thus fully sharing the essence of what Pope Francis explained in the Encyclical Laudato Si’.

The prize and the results that have ensued have gained public interest, getting the support of the Senate of the Italian Republic and the participation of senators of several parties, extending the range of the investigated actions, possibly creating a national network of universities aggregated under the same mission. This serves to promote the feasibility analysis of trans-regional and national interest, especially in the field of infrastructures and renewable energies. Thus, the validity of the model analysis and study of the economic and financial component of the project is recognized in accordance with article 23 of Legislative Decree 50/16 New Code of Public Procurement and how the European Community has already strongly supported with directives n. 24 and n. 25 in 2014.

The underlying objective remains clear and inherent to capillary action of spreading the estimation and evaluation culture among young professional and in the institutions, in order to increase the capacity to gear research to difficult terrain of investment sources and financing for public works or public utility.