Socio-Economic Impact Assessment of Investments: The Case of the Portuguese Northern Region

Abstract

During the last fifteen years, the Portuguese northern region received a significant number of public and private investments that surely contributed to its economic and social development. Most of those investments conveyed the implementation of public policies settled in many strategic documents that framed and guided regional development processes (Pinho et al., 2011). These investments were aimed at strengthening the economic competitiveness (within an adverse internal and external environment), enhance social cohesion (in a territory with strong coast-inland cleavages) and reduce the impacts of projects (through environment requalification). Other investments took place, namely in industry, building industry, trade, services and tourism as a result of the initiatives of different economic regional agents (or agents attracted by the region) hardly influenced by public development policies (Pinho et al., 2011). Both public and private investments shaped the regional economic, social and environmental development. Despite this development is comparable to what happened in other national and European regions through a series of statistical indicators, a deep reflection is required in order to understand the particularities and challenges projects raise to regional development. The analysis reported in this article is relevant because it relates the current situation of the Portuguese northern region and its evolution with the performed public investments, and assesses their impact on populations wellbeing, so it enables the re-settlement of policy and programsŽ goals. It further fits the current European debate on the efficiency of cohesion policies, and the national debate on investment policies. This article starts with the theoretical framework. Then the proposed methodology is shortly described and applied to the case study, followed by the discussion of the attained results. Finally conclusions are presented, and some remarks are made on the impacts and challenges of investments on regional socio-economic balances.