Macro-economic effects of cohesion policy funding in 2007-2013 : ex post evaluation of Cohesion Policy programmes 2007-2013, focusing on the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) and the Cohesion Fund (CF) ; work Package 14c, regression discontinuity design, work package 14d, propensity score matching : executive summary

This final report focuses on evaluating the impact of the EU Funds (EUF, sum of structural and cohesion funds) on regional growth in terms of GDP, employment rate and gross fixed capital formation. The analysis is implemented with a counterfactual impact evaluation approach developed through two methodological instruments: the Propensity score matching (PSM),with multiple categorical treatment-status variables, and the Generalised Propensity Score (GPS) matching. The estimation sample covers the EU-27 Nuts-2 regions across the programming periods 1994-99, 2000-06 and 2007-13. The results of the analysis show that the EUF have a significant role in stimulating regional growth and economic development, with higher average intensities of the EUF in the Ob.1/Convergence regions that generate a positive effect on regional growth, compared to the counterfactual status of receiving the lower average EUF intensity of the non-Ob.1/non-Convergence regions. The results also indicate that the marginal impact on regional growth of further increasing the intensity of the EUF tends to be somehow higher, on average, for the regions that do not already receive an high intensity of the EUF. Such last finding, however, is not fully conclusive due to some important data limitations that do not allow the analysis to estimate the exact conditions under which the different intensities of the EUF produce desirable regional growth outcomes.