Essays on the Economics of Innovation in the Italian Agricultural sector

The thesis aims to offer a reflection on European agricultural policies (the Common Agricultural Policy), particularly on those measures that encourage farmers to participate in systems oriented toward knowledge exchange in order to take part in the entire innovation process (the so-called Agricultural Knowledge and Innovation Systems – AKIS). My interest in these policies stems from the Master’s program I had the pleasure of completing at the University of Naples Federico II (at the Portici Centre), focused on Agricultural Policy. The central question I addressed is whether public funding for R&D is truly contributing to reshaping the profile of farmers in the Italian context. As I highlight in the first chapter of the thesis, the former Agricultural Districts (now Food Districts) have experienced a growing awareness among local actors regarding issues of innovation and knowledge exchange—topics that are today framed within the broader AKIS framework. Building on this framework, in the second chapter I investigated the profile of farmers who benefited from public R&D funds (measured through support under the AKIS measures of the CAP). Finally, the scarcity of data and the limited degree of monitoring by public institutions on these policies led me, in the third chapter, to focus on the more specific EIP-AGRI policies—initiatives aimed at establishing public-private R&D partnerships led by farmers. Through web scraping of information on these projects and the use of Large Language Models to code their characteristics quantitatively, the study presents an analysis of Operational Groups (the partnerships) and their performance in terms of innovativeness.