A new assessment of cohesion policies’ effectiveness: macro and micro approaches

Ugo Fratesi (Principal Investigator), Marco Gianinetto

The project aims to shed light on three issues that gained significant relevance for the effectiveness of cohesion policies: (i) the complementarity with macroeconomic policies; (ii) the territorial context in which policies are implemented; (iii) the effectiveness of EU funding guarantees to encourage lending to SMEs. It uses a multifaced approach relying on existing and newly constructed macro, regional and micro-spatial data, as well as on novel empirical approaches. The project consists of four interconnected sections: 1) analysis of newly constructed exogenous fiscal and monetary policy shocks in amplifying the effect of cohesion policies; 2) study of the effect of public investment policies; 3) construction of a new geo-dataset of referenced projects, referenced firms and their contexts, to examine how firms’ characteristics and location impact on the effectiveness of cohesion projects; 4) study of the effect of credit supply shocks associated with EU financial instruments (funding guarantees), and the role of bank competition and cooperative banks.

Contribution to SDGs: 3, 8, 10