Les problèmes méthodologiques de la mesure des impacts économiques locaux des universités

Nowadays the realization that certain economic units, universities or other objects have impact on the economy of their region comes more and more into prominence. The economic impact study has become a standard tool to persuade state legislatures of the importance of expenditures on higher education. The most general definition is as ?the difference between existing economic activity in a region given the presence of the institution and the level that would have been present if the institution did not exist.? In the practice we face a series of problems: separation of net and gross impact, identification of universities? missions, territorial level choice, statistical model choice, estimation of induced and catalytic impacts, etc. After a methodological review, we demonstrate the example of the University of Szeged (Hungary) and the University of Lorraine (France). An analysis of the limitations is also provided.