Seminario Mercoledì 21 Marzo 2018, Ore 15.00 (Sala dei Consigli)

Julia Bachtrögler (Vu University of Vienna), Ugo Fratesi (Politecnico di Milano), Giovanni Perucca (Politecnico di Milano)

The influence of the local context on the implementation and impact of EU Cohesion Policy

ABSTRACT

This paper analyses the impact of CP grants on firm growth in different European countries for the programming period 2007-13. It does that with a new firm-level database which allows to show that, even when the policy is the same, with similar projects and similar beneficiaries, the interaction between the policy and the territory makes the latter differently effective.Using propensity score matching, the paper shows that Cohesion Policy is differently effective in different countries and according to different indicators, more on quantitative expansion (GVA and employment) than in terms of productivity.Moreover, the impact of the policy on firms, within the same country, can be different according to the presence of assets and the development level of regions.In particular, Cohesion Policy grants tend to be more effective in regions with lower territorial assets, most likely because firms there cannot rely on territorial assets.