Fertile Soil for Structural Funds? A panel data analysis of the conditional effectiveness of European cohesion policy

Sjef Ederveen, Henri de Groot and Richard Nahuis

No 03-14, Working Papers from Utrecht School of Economics

Abstract: Structural funds are the most intensively used policy instrument by the European Union to promote economic growth in its member states and to speed up the process of convergence. This paper empirically explores the effectiveness of European Structural Funds by means of a panel data analysis for 13 countries in the European Union. We show that – on average – Structural Funds are ineffective. For countries with high-quality institutions, however, Structural Funds are effective. This result is obtained for several proxies for institutional quality and is robust for different estimation techniques (OLS, period- and country-specific fixed effects and dynamic panel data models).

Keywords: European Cohesion Policy; policy effectiveness; economic growth; European Union; Ordered by external client (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2003-10
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (12)

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Related works:
Journal Article: Fertile Soil for Structural Funds?A Panel Data Analysis of the Conditional Effectiveness of European Cohesion Policy (2006)
Working Paper: Fertile soil for structural funds? A panel data analysis of the conditional effectiveness of European cohesion policy (2002)
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