The EU Cohesion Policy in context: Does a bottom-up approach work in all regions?

Abstract

This paper looks at the European Union as a laboratory to study how 'spatially-targeted' policies (i.e. the EU Cohesion and Rural Development Policies) interact with sectoral 'spatially-blind' policies (i.e. the Common Agricultural Policy -CAP), jointly shaping regional growth dynamics. The analysis of the drivers of regional growth shows that the EU Regional Policy has a positive influence on economic growth in all regions. However, its impact is stronger in the most socio-economically advanced areas and is maximised when its expenditure is complemented by Rural

The Eu Cohesion Policy and the Factors Conditioning Success and Failure: Evidence from 15 Regions

“…For example, some papers have found Objective 1 eligibility to be associated with higher regional GDP growth; while others have found no statistically signif icant impacts, especially when conditioning growth on other local and national factors. With regard to the latter, a range of possible conditioning factors have been identified in the literature including for example the type of prioritised expenditures (RodriguezPose and Fratesi, 2004), territorial capital (Fratesi and Perucca, 2014), the alignment of expenditure with the underlying socio-economic structure and the coordination between different EU policies (Crescenzi et al, 2015) and the top-down vs. bottom-up nature of the various interventions (Crescenzi and Giua, 2016). Still, no consensus exists in the literature about either the relative or the absolute importance of these factors.…”

“…Cohesion Policy should thus encourage targeted inter ventions that concentrate spending on a limited number of well-prioritised objectives that will correspond well to appropriately-identif ied regional needs. The design of selective and time-consistent interventions is premised on the coordination and balance of top-down and bottom-up approaches (Crescenzi and Giua, 2016) for the identif ication of 'true' regional needs and the selection of the most appropriate remedies. Dispersed spending with limited targeting -often the result of localistic rent-seeking behaviours or 'redistributive' political economy equilibria -may prove wasteful and achieve significantly less, in both 'more able' and 'low capacity' regions.…”

Spatial economic effects of the use of local resources: case of cement-bonded wood fiber blocks

“…Estimation of the structure of spendings by households in the Republic of Karelia can be compiled from statistical data [10]. Households spendings for direct purchases of construction blocks are very small and can be neglected.…”

Poverty, Inequality, And Agriculture In The EU

“…In addition to economic and social cohesion, territorial cohesion was later included as a further objective. In a similar line as Crescenzi and Giua (Crescenzi & Giua, 2016), an important motivating question is whether sectorial policies like the CAP can contribute to or complement other policies' objectives, specifically social cohesion in the EU. In the particular case of the CAP, we want to analyze if this program further complements other existing policies' objectives by better channeling resources to socio-economically deprived areas.…”