Across Europe, regional development agencies (RDAs) have become a central feature of regional policy, both as innovative policy-makers and as the implementers of programmes and initiatives originating from the national or European level. By drawing on a combination of conceptual reflection, surveys, comparative research, and systematic use of critical case studies, this book provides a new point of reference by identifying key features of the current, and, indeed next, generation of regionally-based economic development organisations.

This book brings together experiences of Regional and Development Agencies throughout Europe to provide material for the first major comparative study of bottom-up regional policy across the continent.

Investors are instrumental in the development of new businesses and can be a key component of future success. However, for business ventures outside the general urban environment, communicating with potential sponsors may be difficult. Role of Regional Development Agencies in Entrepreneurial and Rural Development: Emerging Research and Opportunities explores the theoretical and practical aspects of regional economic development and applications within entrepreneurship and provides guidance on how to establish the agencies and implement sustainable development. Featuring coverage on a broad range of topics such as leadership management, organization culture, and socio-economic systems, this book is ideally designed for entrepreneurs, developers, small and medium enterprises, business associations, bankers, financial organizations, researchers, business professionals, academicians, and students.

This book identifies how development agencies and companies work, what they do and how they can collaborate and what constitutes success and value added in their efforts to achieve local economic development.

This is a relatively simple and easy to read introduction of major regional and local economic development theories, their theoretical evolution and other relevant topics such as governance, institutions and local leadership within the globalization context. It also discusses some basic analytical tools and provides a template for them in an easy to use MS Excel spreadsheet application. It introduces conflict management procedures into regional development process and provides a regional decision support framework.

This edited volume brings together original scientific studies on current economic and developmental issues in the Balkan region, and is composed of papers by 25 authors from seven different countries. The Balkan region has gained significant interest in recent years due to its location and strategic position, representing a doorway to Europe, and the region’s stability and progress have direct consequences on various European countries. Because of this strategic position, there is currently much debate regarding a potential partnership of the Balkan states with the European Union. This book offers insights into the current economic and developmental status of the countries in this region, offering a series of chapters that analyse the area from a variety of perspectives. It begins with a discussion on the recent history of the region, especially with reference to the former Yugoslavia and its break-up after the turbulence experienced in 1990s. Other sections are complementary to each other in that they offer comparisons of the Balkan states in their economic progress at the micro and macro levels. Topics such as European integration policies and effects, economic transition, regional trade, tax incentive policy, regional capital markets, regional development agencies and systems, remittances and foreign aid contributions, import-export policies, fiscal policies, analysis of regional microfinance, and the tourism sectors are explored in detail throughout the book.

Throughout the developed world governments have invested substantial sums in local and regional economic development. Many have spent heavily on local development agencies and strategies to bolster competitiveness within world markets. What has been the impact of these actions? How effective are the strategies and processes employed by development agencies? How well funded are development efforts in one nation compared to another, and how are their objectives defined? This book addresses these questions. It: · explores the impact and functioning of economic development agencies; · makes a unique contribution to the emerging literature on economic development agencies by reporting on the results of a cross-national survey of economic development practitioners; · compares the 'institutional architectures' of economic development in Australia, England, the United States and Northern Ireland; · analyses how these institutional arrangements affect individual agencies and their regions. This book is intended for a wide audience including economic development practitioners, local government officers, officials within national or state governments and academics. It provides the reader with a greater appreciation of how local and regional economic development systems operate in different economies and aids understanding of what makes the economic development system in each nation unique. It challenges ideas about the uniformity of economic development efforts and encourages practitioners and policy makers to experiment with and explore strategies used elsewhere.