The Chair on Small Area Methods for Monitoring of Poverty and Living conditions in EU (SAMPL-EU) aims at introducing students and stakeholders to the study of local statistics on poverty and living conditions in order to provide reliable evidence to monitor EU regional policy.

The aim of the Chair is threefold:

1. enhancing the students’ and stakeholders’ abilities to understand and analyse the existing set of poverty and living conditions indicators in Europe (multidimensional and Laeken poverty indicators), (un)employment rates, subjective well-being indicators);
2. building up and teaching a statistical tool-box of Small Area Methods based on traditional and new techniques of survey data collection and integration in order to produce local values and estimates of the indicators for the monitoring of the effects of European Regional Policy in the era of Big data and data deluge;
3. educating the students to communicate the results of the Small Area Methods to the stakeholders, to feed the evidence–based process of policy making with flash-estimates and to provide guidance on what might be the problems that arise in the reliability of the estimates and in the quantitative evaluation of regional policy.

This Jean Monnet Chair was awarded in 2015 to Monica Pratesi, Full Professor of Statistics at the Department of Economics and Management, University of Pisa.

This project is one of the Jean Monnet Activities supported by the European Union.

Within the Erasmus+ Programme, the Jean Monnet Activities aim at promoting excellence in teaching and research in the field of European Union studies worldwide. These activities also aim at fostering the dialogue between the academic world and policy-makers, in particular with the aim of enhancing governance of EU policies.

Key activities include courses, research, conferences, networking activities, and publications in the field of EU studies.

European Union studies comprise the study of Europe in its entirety with particular emphasis on the European integration process in both its internal and external aspects. The discipline also covers the role of the EU in a globalised world and in promoting an active European citizenship and dialogue between people and cultures.