Evaluating Socio-Economic Impacts of PDO on Rural Areas

The European Agricultural Policy tries to achieve sustainable agriculture by paying appropriate subsidies. EU makes agri-food chains more competitive by developing quality policy through the definition and promotion of food quality schemes which consider the area of production as credence good. Those products are classified as Geographical Indication (GI) and include PDO and PGI products. In particular, the generated effects of GIs on territorial level are not clear. The objective of this research is to evaluate the socio-economic impacts of GIs on the territory of origin indicated in the product specification. The research considers all the NUTS 3 regions of Italy, France and Spain during 1993 – 2014 in a framework of dynamic panel model. The results shown that an increase of the number of GI products generate a positive socio-economic impact in a short and long run.