This article assesses the impact of administrative capacity and political governance factors on the absorption of structural and cohesion funds (SCF). We drew on EU‐27 country level data and developed a dynamic panel data model for the 2007–15 implementation period. By using a tobit estimation technique, the results indicated that government effectiveness and public diversion of funds significantly affect the recipient countries ability to absorb EU funds. The results revealed that increasing government effectiveness and combating corruption had significant stronger boosting effects on the absorption of SCF, especially in the new member states (NMS). This might explain why bottlenecks of administrative capacity and political governance are highly relevant for NMS and why these countries generally faced lower absorption rates, as compared to EU‐15. Moreover, the results also underlined that the recent great recession reduced the ability of countries to absorb SCF. Against our expectations, domestic financial capacity and political decentralization were not shown to be decisive for EU funds absorption. In policy terms, our study suggests a focus on administrative capacity‐building and fighting corruption in NMS and across lagging regions of older member states in order to improve absorption rates, while also focusing more on the efficiency and effectiveness of European cohesion policy. Finally, several suggestions are made on how our analysis can be replicated and taken forward by analysts of the European Union's internal development cohesion policy.

Tourism is considered an opportunity for ensuring sustainable growth and reducing economic gaps for many less developed countries and regions. Being one of the most dynamics industries, tourism proves to be strongly resilient, with a high level of involvement and multiplication for receiver economies. The multiplication potential is, however, dependent upon a series of factors (endogenous and exogenous), insufficiently analysed in the literature, and the impact on growth and convergence is controversial. This paper aims to bring additional insights from this perspective, the main purpose of the research being to identify the macroeconomic determinants responsible for the higher values of the tourism multiplier effect and to highlight the potential of this industry to reduce the disparities between the economies of the European Union EU. Using the Stepwise regression and a series of indicators that associate the economic, social and spatial dimensions of European tourism, the main determinants of multiplier effects (on GDP and job creation) are identified and, then, the processes of multiplication from the perspective of centre-periphery dynamics are analysed. The research results indicated that tourism development in the Union reflects a centre-periphery model and has a high potential for contributing to reducing intra-EU disparities.

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Some systems are more adaptable, recovering their functions after a disturbance, returning to pre-disturbance situations at socially and economically acceptable costs; other systems have the capacity to maintain their core functions and, even more so, to improve their performance, whereas others are failing (due to the system's overall resistance to change, thus preserving inefficient functions, or entering a deep and long-term crisis). Synthetically, some socioeconomic systems are resilient, and others are not; in this regard, some regions recover and bounce back to a pre-shock equilibrium, primarily reflecting a high shock absorption capacity, while others perform better and display different development patterns, through transformational changes (bounce-forward), thus showing a high capacity to adapt positively to a shock, for instance, through innovation (Boschma & Martin, 2010;

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