Recent activities ...
State borders represent market imperfections that potentially reduce welfare in border regions. Reasons are different administrative and legal systems, exchange rate fluctuations, customs duties, multiple infrastructures, infrastructural discontinuities or language. The EU Community Initiative INTERREG was launched in 1990 to reduce social and economic frictions and their consequences at EU internal and external borders and to strengthen the goal of economic integration. In October 2019, the consortium consisting of Eureconsult (Echternach, Luxemburg), Dr. Dräger & Thielmann (Frankfurt) and PRAC (Bad Soden) was assigned with a research contract to execute the Ex-ante Evaluation of the new INTERREG VI-A programme "Alpine Rhine - Lake Constance - High Upper Rhine". The main task of PRAC was the assessment and systematic conceptualisation of the programme indicator system. In 2021 and 2022, two further separate research contracts for (i) the elaboration of the Performance Framework and (ii) a cascade-like indicator system with a special focus on funding inputs and statistical estimation of achievable outputs were awarded to PRAC. The client is the Regierungspräsidium Tübingen.As part of an evaluation commissioned by the Ministry of Economic Affairs, Industry, Climate Protection and Energy of the State of North Rhine-Westphalia to the VDI Technology Center, RWI - Leibniz Institute for Economic Research and PRAC group, literature evaluations and empirical studies on the climate relevance of newly planned data centers in the Rhineland Lignite Mining Region were contributed (2024-2025).
At the 2025 GfR summer conference convened by NIERS in Krefeld, R. Bergs (PRAC) presented a joint study with Uwe Neumann (RWI) on spatial dependence in Zipf's law for cities (Preprint: Stability of Zipf's law for cities and occult spatial dependence effects: A study on the OECD countries. ArXiv. March 31, 2025. https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2503.22463).
Together with Rüdiger Budde from the RWI-Leibniz-Institute of Economic Research Rolf Bergs was guest editor of volume 42 (issue 2) of the Review of Regional Research dealing with "The potential of small-scale spatial data".
Publication: Bergs, R. and Budde, R. (2022) The potential of small-scale spatial data in regional science. Review of Regional Research, Vol. 42(2)
Current projects in Germany:
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Ongoing evaluation of the EAFRD funded rural development programme "EULLE" Rheinland-Palatinate 2014-2020:
Measures: (1) Rural and agricultural infrastructure, (2) Infrastructure in steepslope viticulture and (3) flood protection; further to that causal inference analysis of impacts of farm subsidies and support to reporting on the Partnership Agreement (in cooperation with the Institut für ländliche Strukturforschung a.d. Universität Frankfurt), on behalf of the Ministry of Economy, Transport, Agriculture and Viticulture of Rhineland-Palatinate
Contact person: Rolf Bergs
Time frame: 2015-2026 -
Ongoing evaluation of the economic and structural programme of the Rhenish
mining area (WSP):
Contributions to the evaluation of programme indicators and spatial data analyses, in particular pollutant and greenhouse gas emissions
Project under the direction of VDI Technologiezentrum GmbH, in cooperation with the RWI-Leibniz Institute for Economic Research and on behalf of the Ministry of Economic Affairs, Industry, Climate Protection and Energy of the State of North Rhine-Westphalia
Contact person: Rolf Bergs
Time frame: December 2023 - 2028
Current and recent international projects:
- Thematic Expert for the EENRD Evaluation Helpdesk
(DG AGRI) on quantitative evaluation methodologies
Time frame: since 2014
Time frame: 2017-2021
Assigned researchers: Rolf Bergs, Moneim Issa, Karlheinz Knickel (06/2017-12/2020), supported by Marina Kobzeva (06/2018-01/2019)
Responsibility: Rolf Bergs, Moneim Issa
Time frame: 2019-2021