Suchergebnisse

To promote economic and social cohesion, the European Union (EU) structural funds part-finance public investment programmes in European regions with about E30 billion per year. This article develops an explanation for the apportionment of structural funds across EU regions. It is argued that the Commission's decisions on regional transfer levels reflect its bureaucratic interest and potentially undermine EU goals. Using a new data set on regional transfer payments in the EU-15 from 2000 to 2006, and qualitative interviews with decision-makers, this argument is tested and corroborated. In doing so, it is shown that the recipient regions' level of economic affluence is necessary, but no sufficient explanatory factor for regional transfer levels. In contrast to previous findings in the literature, the empirical record does not suggest that regional partisan politics has an effect on the size of regional transfer levels.

Intro -- New Wines and Old Bottles: A Prefatory Footnote -- Preface -- Contents -- List of Figures -- List of Tables -- Chapter 1: Setting the Overall Context -- 1.1 The Scope for Optimality in Economic Growth -- 1.2 Optimality in Regional Policy -- 1.3 The Trade-Off Between 'Regional Equity' and 'Aggregate Efficiency' -- 1.4 Structure of the Study -- References -- Chapter 2: Regional Allocation of Investment -- 2.1 Introduction -- 2.2 Optimality: General Principles -- 2.3 Regional Growth and Allocation of Investment -- 2.4 Optimal Allocation Policies -- 2.5 The Switching Time -- 2.6 Conclusion -- References -- Chapter 3: Conflicts in Regional Policy -- 3.1 Introduction -- 3.2 The Necessity of Regional Policy -- 3.3 Regional Policy: A Substitution Between Equity and Efficiency? -- 3.4 Trade-Off and Regional Allocation of Investment -- 3.5 Regional Allocation of Investment and Regional Equity -- 3.6 Introducing 'Equity' in the Objective Function -- 3.7 Conclusion -- References -- Chapter 4: Compatibility Between Equity and Efficiency -- 4.1 Introduction -- 4.2 Redefining the Aim of 'Regional Equity' -- 4.3 Overcoming the Dilemma of Regional Policy -- 4.4 Compatibility in the Aims of Regional Policy in a Multiregional/Multispectral Economy -- 4.5 Implications for Regional Planning -- 4.6 Conclusion -- References -- Chapter 5: Conclusion -- Appendix -- Maximising Total Consumption -- Index

Many countries have "regional problems". Income and political
power are allocated unequally among regions with no significant change
over time, and these inequities are a source of political tension. The
regional problem in Pakistan is especially severe because the peculiar
geographic nature of Pakistan makes the issue so visible1. Economic
planners in Pakistan and other poor countries are often as¬signed the
task of designing programmes to bring about income parity among regions.
In doing so, planners confront several analytic and technical prob¬lems.
The principal difficulty is how to allocate resources so as to best
conform to political preferences of policy-makers. In this context it is
desirable to dis¬cover and exploit the comparative advantages of the
regions. Regional com¬parative advantages, in turn, are dependent upon
the regional distribution of resources and upon political preferences as
to the regional allocation of welfare.

This paper proposes a simultaneous-equation approach to the estimation of the contribution of transport infrastructure accumulation to regional growth. We model explicitly the political-economy process driving infrastructure investments; in doing so, we eliminate a potential source of bias in production-function estimates and generate testable hypotheses on the forces that shape infrastructure policy. Our empirical findings on a panel of France's regions over 1985-91 suggest that influence activities were, indeed, significant determinants of the cross-regional allocation of transportation infrastructure investments. Moreover, we find little evidence of concern for the maximization of economic returns to infrastructure spending, even after controlling for pork-barrel and when imposing an exogenous preference for convergence in regional productivity levels. ; In dieser Untersuchung wird ein simultanes Gleichungssystem zur Schätzung des Beitrags von Verkehrsinfrastrukturinvestitionen zu regionalem Wachstum verwendet. Es wird explizit der politische Prozeß modelliert, der Infrastrukturinvestitionen determiniert; dadurch wird eine mögliche Ursache einer verzerrten Parameterschätzung vermieden, die eintreten kann, wenn Produktionsfunktionen einzeln geschätzt werden. Gleichzeitig fließen in das Modell weitere empirisch überprüfbare Hypothesen über die Determinanten von Infrastrukturpolitik ein. Die empirischen Ergebnisse für einen Paneldatensatz mit 21 französischen Regionen im Zeitraum 1985-1991 zeigen, daß unterstützende Aktivitäten in der Tat einen signifikanten Einfluß auf die regionale Allokation von Verkehrsinfrastrukturinvestitionen haben. Darüber hinaus werden nur wenig empirische Hinweise dafür gefunden, daß auch erwartete Produktivitätseffekte von Infrastruktur bei der regionalen Allokation in Frankreich von Bedeutung sind.