MAIN FINDINGS AND PROPOSALS OF THE SPANISH CLUSTER POLICY EVALUATION: THE AEIS PROGRAMME

In the US and Europe many clusters initiatives have recently been launched. National and regional governments have been defining and implementing clusters policies and programmes with the aim to identifying, launching and finally consolidating international competitive clusters in their respective territories. In this context, The Ministry of Industry Commerce and Tourism of the Spanish Government have been implementing a cluster policy since 2007 known as the AEIs Programme. This Programme has been implemented in two stages. The first one has been the financing of the elaboration of Strategic Plans for cluster proposals selected by the Ministry in a competitive process. The second has been the financing of the constituting and launching of cluster associations and collaborative projects among members at national and European level. On completion of the first three years of the project, an evaluation has been carried out. Of the 142 proposals received by the Ministry, 101 clusters have been selected and constituted as AEIs (clusters associations supported by specific financial frameworks). These AEIs represent 2,268 firms and 493 institutions (universities, R&D centres, public bodies etc.). These organizations account for a total of 450,734 workers, making up 2.4% of the total Spanish employment figure. This total rises to 6.5% if the indirect effects on the entire value chain are considered. The Ministry has financed these AEIs to the tune of € 9 million, a small amount considering the huge knock-on effect of these clusters achieved over the last three years. This knock-on effect has attracted finance from other sources of more than €243 million; €196 million dedicated to collaborative R&D+i projects. The evaluation has also gathered data from cluster initiative managers and regional cluster policy managers about the about initiatives at regional level. This evaluation has documented the necessities of these clusters and the opportunities arising from the AEIs Programme. As a result of this assessment, the evaluation also proposes new lines to be developed in the following stages of the Programme.

Development of Evaluation Systems – Evaluation Capacity Building in the Framework of the New Challenges of EU Structural Policy

The paper presents the changing role of evaluation for public policies and the increasing importance of comprehensive evaluation systems for more effective and learning public institutions. In this context, evaluation systems are becoming an essential element of governance and democratic processes. Within the framework of the current EU Structural Policy and its new challenges (enlargement, new priorities, regional policy paradigm), the creation and the development of evaluation capacities and comprehensive evaluation systems becomes increasingly an instrument for organizational learning and policy improvement. In this context, the development of evaluation systems is not only fundamental for the new member states, but also for countries with a poor evaluation culture or a fragmented evaluation system. However, evaluation still lacks the necessary resources and infrastructure to become an accepted and integrated governance tool, despite the growth of the European Evaluation Community and the take-off of several National Evaluation Societies in the past years. Unexploited potentials exist on the supply side (evaluators, skills, training, dialogue), but also on the demand side (commissioning, data monitoring, use of evaluations) of the evaluation system. Evaluation Capacity Building (ECB), as an approach for the development of evaluation systems, is the integrated and planned development of skills, resources and infrastructures and the intentional shift towards an evaluation culture in an organization, department or government. Nonetheless, getting to grips with the institutionalisation of the discipline of evaluation and the building of an ongoing evaluation capacity turns out to be extremely difficult: Which are concrete measures of ECB? Who is responsible for the measures, for the implementation? What are the target groups? When has the ECB been successful? are only some of the questions that come up.

Social Mobility and Demand for Redistribution. A Comparative Analysis

The literature on preferences for redistribution has paid little attention to the effect of social mobility on the demand for redistribution, which is in contrast with the literature on class-voting, where studies on the effect of social mobility has been very common. Some works have addressed this issue but no systematic test of the hypotheses connecting social mobility and preferences has been done. In this paper we use the diagonal reference models to estimate the effect of origin and destination class on preferences for redistribution in a sample of European countries using data from the European Social Survey. Our findings indicate that social origin matters to a little extent to explain preferences, as newcomers tend to adopt the preferences of the destination class. Moreover, we have found only limited evidence supporting the acculturation hypothesis and not support for the status maximization hypothesis. Furthermore, the effect of social origin varies largely between countries. In a second step of the analysis we investigate what are the national factors explaining this variation. The empirical evidence we present leads to conclude that high rates of upward social mobility sharply reduce the effect of social origin on preferences for redistributionUniversidad de Málaga. Campus de Excelencia Internacional Andalucía Tech

Unfolding the double shuffle structure of q-multiple zeta values

We exhibit the double q-shuffle structure for the qMZVs recently introduced by Y. Ohno, J. Okuda and W. Zudilin.Comment: Submitted. Added paragraphs (5.2 and 5.3) on handling non-modified qMZVs. Red internal comment remove

A Multivariate Exploration of School Counselor Engagement with Students with Disabilities

Students with disabilities are at risk for a myriad of academic and personal/social challenges. School counselors are in a unique position to act as advocates for students with disabilities and their families to ensure that they have the educational and community supports they need for healthy academic, career, and personal/social development. Unfortunately, the professional school counseling literature highlights that school counselors are not adequately trained to effectively engage with students with disabilities. This study explored the predictive factors that may play an influential role in the engagement of school counselors in school counseling activities with students with disabilities. Variables explored included number of students with disabilities on current school counselor caseload, quality of contact with individuals with disabilities, graduate education in disability, attitudes towards individuals with disabilities, feelings of preparedness to engage students with disabilities, and school counselor cognitive complexity. Path analysis and exploratory factor analysis were used to examine the influence of these variables on school counselor engagement with students with disabilities. Implications for school counselor educators, and future avenues of research are discussed

Cognitive Complexity in Counseling and Counselor Education: A Systematic and Critical Review

Cognitive complexity has found a small yet established niche in the counseling and counselor education literature over the last 40 years. This body of research has highlighted how individuals with high cognitive complexity have greater consistency in empathy, show more varied responses to clients, demonstrate greater toleration of ambiguity, and show higher frequencies of unbiased clinical judgements towards clients. This article provides a systematic and critical review of the cognitive complexity literature and discusses future implications of cultivating cognitive complexity in emerging and professional counselors and supervisors

Welfare Policies and Solidarity Toward the Elderly

In this paper we analyze the effect of welfare policies oriented toward the elderly on solidarity toward the elderly in a sample of European countries. The research question is whether more generous welfare policies crowd out solidarity. For this purpose, we analyze four waves of the SHARE database. We use multilevel analysis to estimate the effect of national variables on transfers toward the elderly, controlling for individual level variables. At the national level we focus on the effect of public spending on policies oriented toward the elderly after controlling for some other relevant variables, such as the proportion of elderly people, female labor force participation and unemployment. Our results indicate that expenditure in social protection toward the elderly has a positive and significant (albeit moderate) effect on the economic support received by the elderly (which is in line with the Crowding-in hypothesis). However, in the case of time transfers, we find that expenditure in social protection toward the elderly has a negative and significant impact on the time transfers received by the elderly (which is consistent with the Crowding-out hypothesis).Universidad de Málaga. Campus de Excelencia Internacional Andalucía Tech