The methodological approach

• Author: Naldini, Andrea; Pompili, Marco; Peruccacci, Eleonora
• Pages: 24-27

24

Section 2.The methodologicalapproach

This sectionillustratest he proposed met hodological approach. The descriptive nature

of the study favo urs theadoption of a very practical an d direct met hodology.

2.1.Approa ch to t he stu dy

The study has a descriptive nature(‘fact-finding study’) because it has to provide

adequate in formation on h ow State aidevaluation works in t he different countr ies, the

influence of the national regulations, the evaluation capacity available and the

operational arrangements put in place. These elements arerarely analysed inthe28

countries andare also still largely unexploredin the more t raditional field of the ESIF

evaluation . Con sequ ent ly, t he colle ctio n o f t arg ete d, upda ted an d ad equa te inf orm at ion

fr om all t he MSs is the pr imary purpo seand the condition for the success of t he study.

This objective has to be consistent with the limited amount of resources and time

available and duplication or inefficiency must be avoided in dat a collect ion andfrom a

methodological point of view. In this respect, thedata collectionactivitiesof the two

tasks werecom bined as m uch as possible in order to av oid repetitio ns.

A fundamentalaspectis the organisation of the information according t o a set of

cat egor ies coher ent with t he o bje ctiv es o f t he stu dy. This is not a tr ivia l po int , b ecause,

as we have observed above, the role of evaluation in a MS and its implementation

involve a large numberof institutions, different administrative t iers, legal and political

conditions, evaluation capacity in the administrations and society. Each of these

components will be categorised and information will be storedaccordingly; this will

avoid the loss ofinformation inthe process ofinserting itinto a dataset and, at the

sam e t ime,willm ake comp ariso ns and analyses easier .

An ad dit iona l issuest emm ingfrom t he l arge numb erof element sinvolvedis th e r isk of

enlarging the scope of the analysis and not addressing the research questions. The

focus of our analysis will be on State aidevaluations and will not embrace the entire

national evaluation system; when necessary, the national systemwill be investigated

from the point of view of State aid(for instance, broadnational requirements which

includeState aid evaluations,the nat ional un it respons ible for the ev alua tio ns incl uding

that of State aid, etc.)but also in this case the analysis will always serve the

com prehension of State aidevaluations.

In addition to these more pr actical issues, the study raises also interpret ive issues. As

noted above in theSection 1 about the background, a first issue concerns the relation

bet ween t he l egal fra mew ork and evalua tion pra ctice . Th e leg al r equire men ts mayonly

bepartially respected or theirfulfilment maybemainly formal. Furthermore,t he

absence of strict rules does not imply th e absence of evaluat ion. To t ackle t his issue, it

is necessar y t o ef fect ively lin k t he d esk analysis w ith t he field r esear ch and the sur vey.

Similarly, triangulating informationfrom different sources may reduce the risk of

form ing a biased v iew of t he concr ete evalu ation processes.

It is also evidentthatevaluation processes cannot be analysed separately from the

methodological designrequired by State aidevaluation. The reconstruction of the

legal and procedural framework has to be linkedto the met hodological needs forSt ate

aidevaluation(timing, inf orm at ion an d t yp e of ev alu ati on) . This re spon ds t o som e b asic

questions regarding t he impact of the aid on market com petition and on the economic

performance of the beneficiaries;in general,evaluation has to use quantitative and

counterfactual methods. Asthe legal framework and methods respondto different

priorities,the over lap ping of nat ion al a nd EU r ules maycr eat e in consi sten cies. Thi salso