In this paper we aim to explore the conditioning effect of structural funds (SF) on regional growth in Greece for the period 1994-2006 by detecting if the ability of regions to convert any financial aid into welfare gains is related to certain regionspecific characteristics. The analysis shows that, albeit that important financial aid has been channelled to the less-developed regions, the most advanced regions seem to have benefited more from it. Furthermore, we divide the SF into expenditure categories and conclude that the SF have a positive impact on growth only for those regions in which the regions' endowments are related to the expenditure received. This interaction of the expenditure categories with the characteristics of the recipient region accentuates the role of the 'identity' of each region to the impact of SF on regional growth, thereby signifying valuable policy implications.

Almost 30 years since the Maastricht Treaty and 20 years since the introduction of the euro, it is clear that the European Union (EU) has lost its appeal to wider constituencies and citizen groups that realize that the promises for convergence and prosperity have not been delivered. Rising dissatisfaction and Euroscepticism (expressed both in the ballot box and in Eurobarometer reports) is evident even in traditional pro-EU countries of the European core. As this long decade comes to an end, incidents (or accidents) like these ones, either in the form of open discontent, or in the form of rising populism, will exert pressure on the EU policy agenda that will either increase the frequency of deadlocks and inefficiency in policy making or will eventually lead to an honest effort to address the roots of these phenomena. This paper examines the drivers behind these two incidents (and the ones that may follow) and the limits of the current market and policy integration arrangements in the EU, arguing that a new policy agenda addressing the real weaknesses of the Union is inevitable if disintegration is to be avoided. Luckily enough, some elements of this new policy agenda may already be here.

This paper explores the effects of import competition on the manufacturing sector in Chile following the implementation of the country's two largest Free Trade Agreements (FTA) (with the USA and China). Exploiting cross-industry variation in import exposure, we analyse the effects on manufacturing sales, employment and labour productivity at the finest level of industrial classification (4 digit ISIC level). We detect an overall negative effect of increased Chinese import penetration, owing to substitution effects from low and medium tech imports and a less pronounced effect from USA imports. By introducing interaction effects, we find that the levels of foreign ownership and the export intensity of the domestic industries reverse the negative effect due to the opportunities offered via participation in global value chains. An IV strategy is applied to address standard endogeneity concerns and confirm the robustness of our estimates.

This paper examines the link between increased trade and regional GDP growth across the regional income distribution in Greece during the post-EMU period (2000–2013). By means of quantile regression techniques, panel fixed effects and system generalized method of moments (GMM), we disentangle the effects of EU trade—trading with generally richer countries—versus global trade—in the case of Greece, mostly trading with poorer countries—at several points of the regional income distribution to identify differences in trade elasticities. The analysis finds that the impact of EU trade is highly heterogeneous and mainly affects negatively the economy of the richer regions in Greece. In contrast, the effects of EU trade display insignificant results for the lower-income regions, attributed to the absence of direct substitution effects.