COOPERATION AND DEVELOPMENT SCHOOL OF PAVIA
UNIVERSITY OF PAVIA – UNIVERSITY INSTITUTE OF ADVANCED STUDY (IUSS)

Cooperation Activities with the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics (PCBS) and Palestinian Universities

The Cooperation and Development School of Pavia (CDS) began offering two- and three-week training courses in Computable General Equilibrium (CGE) Models and Time Series Econometrics in 2004 to functionaries of the Palestinian National Authority and Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics (PCBS). The four past editions, 2004 to 2007, have been financed by the Accademia dei Lincei, the European Union, the Italian Cooperation in Jerusalem, and IUSS-University of Pavia, respectively.
The cooperation with PCBS has been so far extremely fruitful and produced tangible mutual benefits. Such a cooperation was made concretely possible thanks to the active collaboration of both the Department of Economics and Quantitative Methods and the Department of Public Economics of the University of Pavia.
In the past years several young Palestinian students completed their post-graduate studies at CDS holding a scholarship, attaining the two Masters Degree and Summer School Diploma – a visible sign of the commitment of CDS members towards capacity and institution-building of the Palestinian society.

In May 2007 CDS undersigned an Agreement with PCBS based on research and educational activities. CDS is to provide 2 yearly fellowships to PCBS staff to attend the Ph.D of the University of Pavia and the Master Program CIEI of IUSS. This collaboration will be extended to joint research within the framework of CASR – Centre for Advanced Study and Research founded at Bethlehem University (BU).

In fact, in February 2005 at Bethlehem University, during the PEACE Program conference, a Memorandum of Understanding, MoU, was signed between the University of Siena, the University of Pavia and the University Institute for Advanced Studies (IUSS), Bethlehem University, An-Najah National University, and Bir Zeit University, under the Patronage of the Italian Ministry of Education, University and Research (MIUR) and of the Ministry of Education and Higher Education of the Palestinian National Authority (PNA) and of the PEACE Programme to create a Centre for Advanced Studies and Research in the field of International Cooperation and Development in Palestine. The five Universities built research units that are working in concerted action at a comprehensive research on socio-economic Palestinian environment to be presented at a final conference in Pavia in 2009.

These recent activities are being mostly financed by the Italian Ministry of University and Research and add to the actions already in vigor. In 2004 the University of Pavia led the application to a Joint European Project TEMPUS-MEDA to establish a Master Program in Cooperation and Development at Bethlehem University, in partnership with the University College of Dublin and University of Nijmegen, the Italian NGO VIS and the Palestinian NGO PARC. The project was selected and granted a three-year financing starting from September 2006. Besides activities directly related to the Master implementation, the TEMPUS project foresees activities of training and higher education for fresh graduates and capacity-building for academic personnel of partner southern universities, assuming and contemplating North-South mobility. The Master Program in International Cooperation and Development (MICAD) at the University of Bethlehem is now running its third edition.

Documents:

• The MICAD -Master International Cooperation and Development- and the Centre for Advanced Studies and Research in International Cooperation and Development, CASR-ICD in Palestine by Prof. Gianni Vaggi. MICAD and CASR-ICD

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