Suchergebnisse

To what extent do regions in different member states of the European Union benefit from Cohesion Policy? A spatial regression discontinuity design approach offers distinct but fully comparable estimates of regional impacts for each individual member state. Cohesion Policy has a positive European Union-wide impact on regional growth and employment. However, a large part of the growth bonus is concentrated in Germany, while impacts on employment are confined to the UK. The picture in Southern Europe is less rosy. In Italy, positive impacts on employment do not survive the Great Recession, while in Spain economic growth benefits are limited to the recovery period.

AbstractWe provide the first evidence of the role played by the Cohesion Policy in terms of insurance against income shocks affecting the European Union (EU) regions. By following state‐of‐the‐art modelling, we measured income risk‐sharing amongst 270 NUTS‐2 regions over two concluded programming periods (2000–2006 and 2007–2013), distinguishing across several sub‐groups of regions characterized by different macroeconomic conditions, integration of markets and regional levels of economic disadvantage. We found that, by and large, the income risk‐sharing role of the EU Funds inflow is non‐negligible and it becomes particularly relevant in the second programming period. Further, the Cohesion Policy exerted a significant and positive role in income stabilization after the Global Financial Crisis and the Sovereign Debt Crisis and during the negative phases of the business cycle, particularly for those regions lagging or belonging to less stable countries from the macroeconomic point of view (Less Developed regions and Mediterranean EU). This novel evidence of the short‐run stabilizing effect of the Cohesion Policy aims to contribute to the debate on the role of EU institutions in improving the capacity of regions to tackle economic shocks, which is particularly relevant at the launch of the Next Generation EU.

This paper develops an evidence-based approach to the selection and prioritisation of Next Generation EU (NGEU) projects for timely implementation and impact of the Recovery Plan for Europe. The analysis of a large sample of projects, currently funded by the European Union (EU) with the same priorities and objectives of NGEU, suggests that a timely implementation should be driven – within the EU Commission coordination framework – by national governments liaising directly with their citizens through participatory procedures, involving relevant stakeholders. Simplified implementation procedures with clear spatial targeting and limited involvement of regional authorities are necessary conditions for the avoidance of implementation delays.

Can active investment promotion efforts attract FDI towards areas and sectors that would not otherwise be targeted? This paper leverages an ad hoc survey on national and sub-national Investment Promotion Agencies (IPAs) in Europe and applies state-of-the-art policy evaluation methods to estimate the impact of IPAs on FDI attraction. The results show that FDI responds to IPAs even in advanced economies. Sub-national IPAs, operating in closer proximity to investors' operations, attract FDI in particular towards less developed areas where market and institutional failures are stronger. IPAs influence FDI over and above other policies targeting the general economic improvement of the host economies. Impacts are concentrated in knowledge-intensive sectors where collaborative systemic conditions are more relevant. IPAs work best for less experienced companies - 'occasional' investors - more likely to suffer from institutional failures. Finally, IPAs are equally effective in attracting companies from both outside and inside the EU Single Market even if the latter are less likely to suffer from regulatory or information asymmetries. Overall, this evidence sheds new light on the role of sub-national IPAs as local 'institutional plumbers' in support of foreign investors and their operations.

Growing Euroscepticism across the European Union (EU) leaves open questions as to what citizens expect to gain from EU Membership and what influences their dissent for EU integration. This paper looks at the EU Structural Funds, one of the largest and most visible expenditure items in the EU budget, to test their impact on electoral support for the EU. By leveraging the Referendum on Brexit held in the United Kingdom, a spatial RDD analysis offers causal evidence that EU money does not influence citizens' support for the EU. Conversely, the analysis shows that EU funds mitigate Euroscepticism only where they are coupled with tangible improvements in local labour market conditions, the ultimate objective of this form of EU intervention. Money cannot buy love for the EU, but its capacity to generate new local opportunities certainly can.

Growing Euroscepticism across the European Union (EU) leaves open ques- tions as to what citizens expect to gain from EU Membership and what influ- ences their dissent for EU integration. This paper looks at the EU Structural Funds, one of the largest and most visible expenditure items in the EU bud- get, to test their impact on electoral support for the EU. By leveraging the Referendum on Brexit held in the United Kingdom, a spatial RDD analysis offers causal evidence that EU money does not influence citizens' support for the EU. Conversely, the analysis shows that EU funds mitigate Euroscepti- cism only where they are coupled by tangible improvements in local labour market conditions, the ultimate objective of this form of EU intervention. Money cannot buy love for the EU, but its capacity to generate new local opportunities certainly can.

This paper evaluates a programme of subsidies for Collaborative Industrial Research (co-)funded by the EU Cohesion Policy in Italy mobilising over 1 billion euros. This programme in the 2007-2013 funding cycle was a precursor to some of the key features of Smart Specialisation Strategy (S3) programmes, offering evidence-based insights on potential challenges to the practical application of the S3 approach. The programme was not successful in boosting investments, value added or employment of beneficiary firms. The collaborative dimension of the projects added limited value and a more generous funding level would not have improved effectiveness. However, positive impacts emerged in low-tech sectors.