The impact of cohesion policies on the development of Italian regions

Abstract

The article addresses “The impact of cohesion policies on the development of Italian regions”, placing the theme in the economic, social and territorial framework discussed by the authors. For the South, 2015 estimates also detect a recovery of capital expenditure compared to the previous year which should be attested to 15.5 billion euros. In particular in the Mezzogiorno capital expenditure, reduced to lumicino, is largely replaced by ERDF and ESF, which instead of adding to ordinary resources replaces them. In summary, it can be summarised that empirical checks seem to confirm the positive impact of the Structural Funds on regional economies, but in a heterogeneous way. Both European and national funds are instead derived from the database “Regionalised State Expenditure” of the Ministry of Economy and Finance. It should be pointed out that these series, which refer to the sums actually paid to the regions, are the result of fully consistent calculation procedures. The SYS-GMM (Blundell and Bond, 1998) method was also used to take into account the dynamic structure of the model and the possible endogenity of the funds.

Keywords

Cohesion policy; Italy; Italian regions; European Union; Half-day; governance

JEL codes

R58; F15; R12