In relation to other forecasting applications, policy impact forecasting is an important application which has received surprisingly little attention in terms of research from the field in the past. Once policies proposed by the EC are approved by the Council or the Parliament, it is the responsibility of the Member States to implement them, with the EC overseeing this process. In many instances, particularly for environmental policies, the implementation strategy will attempt to promote the use of a new eco-friendly technology through a series of incentives, to aid in hitting the EU target. Generally, there will be many different strategies available to Member State governments for reaching the goals and targets set by the EU legislation. To aid in this decision making process, forecasts of the adoption rate of each of the different strategies will be an indication as to their effectiveness. This in turn can be used to estimate the financial investment required by each, an important criterion as the governments will have fixed budgets for such undertakings. This research highlights the importance and need for such forecasts. Furthermore, it proposes a new hybrid approach for producing these forecasts which combines structured analogies and econometric modelling
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