Bailey, David; Clark, Jennifer; Colombelli, Alessandra; Corradini, Carlo; De Propris, Lisa; Derudder, Ben; Fratesi, Ugo; Fritsch, Michael; Harrison, John; Hatfield, Madeleine; Kemeny, Tom; Kogler, Dieter; Lagendijk, Arnoud; Lawton, Philip; Ortega-Argilés, Raquel; Usai, Stefano
doi: 10.1080/00343404.2019.1698837pmid: N/A
Crescenzi, Riccardo; Fratesi, Ugo; Monastiriotis, Vassilis
doi: 10.1080/00343404.2019.1662895pmid: N/A
In a context of rising economic nationalism and Euroscepticism, the value added of a supranational Cohesion Policy of the European Union is constantly under scrutiny. In parallel, a growing body of empirical evidence uncovers a significant heterogeneity of national and regional impacts. This editorial argues that member states should take full responsibility and ownership of Cohesion Policy and its impacts, regaining a substantive role between Brussels and the regions. Strong national leadership and coordination will allow ‘weak’ regions (in terms of institutional quality and governance) to gain momentum, better reconciling ‘unity with (national and regional) diversity’.
Crescenzi, Riccardo; Giua, Mara
doi: 10.1080/00343404.2019.1665174pmid: N/A
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.
Bachtrögler, Julia; Fratesi, Ugo; Perucca, Giovanni
doi: 10.1080/00343404.2018.1551615pmid: N/A
This paper analyzes the impact of the European Union's Cohesion Policy on firm growth in the programming period 2007–13 in seven European countries. Results show that Cohesion Policy support promotes firm growth in size (value added and employment) more than in productivity. However, even when the policy is the same and similar projects and beneficiaries are considered, its effectiveness varies across different territorial contexts, among but also within countries. In several cases, the impact of grants on firm growth is larger in regions with lower income or scant endowments of territorial assets, most likely because firms in those regions cannot rely on external assets.
Di Cataldo, Marco; Monastiriotis, Vassilis
doi: 10.1080/00343404.2018.1498073pmid: N/A
With the prospective exit of the UK from the European Union (EU), a crucial question is whether EU Structural Funds have been beneficial for the country and which aspects of Cohesion Policy should be maintained if EU funds are to be replaced. This paper addresses this question through a twofold investigation, assessing not only whether but also how EU funds have contributed to regional growth in the UK from 1994 to 2013. It documents a significant and robust effect of Cohesion Policy in the UK, with higher proportions of Structural Funds associated with higher economic growth both on the whole and particularly in the less developed regions of the country. In addition, it is shown that the strategic orientation of investments also plays a distinct role for regional growth. While concentration of investments on specific pillars seems to have no direct growth effects, unless regions can rely on pre-existing competitive advantages in key development areas, clear evidence is unveiled that targeting investments to specific areas of relative regional need has a significant and autonomous effect on growth. These findings have important implications for the design of regional policy interventions in Britain after Brexit.
Varga, Attila; Sebestyén, Tamás; Szabó, Norbert; Szerb, László
doi: 10.1080/00343404.2018.1527026pmid: N/A
An undesirable result of the rapid implementation of smart specialization into the framework of European Union Cohesion Policy was that it left several practical issues unanswered. An important unanswered issue is the implementation of economic impact assessment in a smart specialization policy context. Integrating entrepreneurship and interregional network policies into an economic modelling framework is considered among the most prominent challenges. This paper introduces how these two policies are implemented in the GMR-Europe (geographic, macro and regional) model. The simulations highlight that smart specialization policy targeting the development of entrepreneurship and knowledge networks is not equally successful in all regions.
Berkowitz, Peter; Monfort, Philippe; Pieńkowski, Jerzy
doi: 10.1080/00343404.2019.1570491pmid: N/A
In the context of proposals for a stronger focus on results in Cohesion Policy post-2020, it is necessary to strengthen the link between interventions and evidence on effectiveness. This paper argues that growth regressions and regression discontinuity analysis focusing on regional growth do not provide sufficient detail to support policy-makers in intervention design. A more nuanced picture would be achieved by unpacking intervention in different policy areas at the micro-level and analyzing the channels through which policy contributes to economic growth. The paper reviews the main direct and indirect transmission channels in three areas: research and innovation; support to enterprises; and infrastructure. In this respect, impact evaluations at beneficiary and, in particular, firm level offer a rich potential source of evidence and need to be systematically built into data collection and evaluation of post-2020 Cohesion Policy.
doi: 10.1080/00343404.2018.1455000pmid: N/A
This paper analyzes the relationships between the degree of decentralization of a public policy and the emergence of horizontal strategic interactions. The Structural Fund allocation process is investigated by determining how the governance structure of the Cohesion Policy affects the development of strategic spatial interactions between regional governments. A political agency model was developed. The main proposition is that the appearance of spatial interactions increases with the degree of policy decentralization. From the empirical analysis, this theoretical proposition is confirmed by showing that spatial interactions are more intense when the policy governance is decentralized.
Coppola, Gianluigi; Destefanis, Sergio; Marinuzzi, Giorgia; Tortorella, Walter
doi: 10.1080/00343404.2018.1447099pmid: N/A
This paper analyzes the effects of cohesion policies on the gross domestic product (GDP) per capita of the 20 Italian administrative regions for the period 1994–2013. The analysis includes both European Union and national funds. It estimates average partial effects through a control-function approach based on the funds’ allocation rules, and allows for the role of the regional environment on the impact of regional policies. A positive impact of European Union funds is found, as well as a less significant impact of (nationally financed) subsidies to firms. Quality of government has no relevance for European Union funds, but it enhances the impact of subsidies to firms.
Psycharis, Yannis; Tselios, Vassilis; Pantazis, Panayotis
doi: 10.1080/00343404.2018.1525696pmid: N/A
This paper sets out to estimate the contribution of European Union co-financed and nationally funded public investment expenditures to regional growth in Greece during the period 2000–14. The results are sensitive to the time period and the geographical level of the interventions. While nationally funded projects boosted the growth performance of the regions before the eruption of the economic crisis, there is no indication that the European Union co-financed projects have led to increased growth. The results question the additionality and coordination between European Union Cohesion Policy and the domestic regional policies for the promotion of regional growth in the less well-off regions of Europe.
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